


MLP x Ghost Trick: Death Wish

by supercomputer276



Category: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-03 13:54:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1071230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supercomputer276/pseuds/supercomputer276
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tonight in Ponyville, something's going down. Something big. But Twilight Sparkle may not live to see it, as a mysterious assailant breaks into her home and kills her. But then someone else appears to her, a lost spirit that claims he can change her fate and save her life with inexplicable powers. And though she can't figure out how he's doing it, he does it and only the two of them remember. He's not supposed to be here, but he has to be here for a reason, right?</p>
<p>Many mysterious things will happen in this town tonight.</p>
<p>It's Trick Time.</p>
<p>WARNING: Will contain major Ghost Trick ending spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 8:20 PM

**Author's Note:**

> **FINAL WARNING: This fanfic contains major spoilers for the plot of _Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective_! If you don’t want the mysteries of that game spoiled for you, I suggest you leave this page and play the game (you can get it for a good price on the iTunes Store or find a used DS copy) or watch one of the many video walkthroughs on YouTube. Then come back because I want you to actually read this.**

_Must have been unconscious for a while…_

_The sensation of swimming through darkness was familiar. I’ve done this before._

_I checked myself. I remember this shape. I remember who I am. So I don’t have to spend a whole night on that again._

_But when I came to, I didn’t recognize this place I found myself in. My last memory was curling up in my bed at home. I don’t sleep, not anymore, but I still went through the actions to pass as normal. Sometimes I even got some rest. Somehow, I was moved here, to a completely unfamiliar place, without my knowing it._

_That’s when I realized I was not in my body. It wasn’t here. Where was it?_

_My name is Sissel. In case you didn’t know, I’m already dead._

Snapped to attention, Sissel quickly looked around. He had gotten quite around his hometown in over ten years and knew most of the nice nooks, but none of it looked like this. It was night, a time he was very familiar with, and he was at the foot at what looked like a giant tree. A giant tree that looked like it had windows cut into it, and balconies built into it, almost like a house. He had never seen anything like it, not even right now; a few other houses were visible from his position, but they looked like cottages with thatch roofs. He was reminded of some illustrations in some fairy tale books Detective Jowd had read to his daughter before bed. Parked nearby was what looked like a horse-drawn wagon filled with carpenter supplies and tools. Or rather, pony-drawn wagon, as he could see the wagon was hooked up to two dull brown ponies wearing black hats.

_I’m also currently a plank of wood. Which is… rather unfortunate._

What concerned him the most was that his body was nowhere in sight. Where was it, and for that matter, where was he?

Although he wouldn’t claim to be the smartest knife in the drawer (in part because that analogy came out wrong), it didn’t take him long to figure that the plank he was in had fallen from the wagon, probably when it stopped. He could see several just like it stacked up higher than the wagon’s walls. Perhaps his body was wherever the wagon came from. As good a lead as anything.

But before he could act on this logic, he was interrupted by a barrage of sounds from what seemed like inside the tree. Which made sense, he supposed, since the tree looked like a house, so it probably acted like one as well.

First, there was the sound of something crashing through a window.

Next, a young female voice, shouting. “What-?! W-Who are you?!”

A male voice answered. “There you are. It’s time we settled this.”

“What are you talking about?! I’ve never seen you before!”

A thud, as if something dropped.

“Glory to the true ruler!” the male shouted.

“Ahh!” A scream of fear from a third voice, male but couldn’t have been much older than Kamila.

“Spike! Get out of here!” the female yelled.

There was what sounded like charging energy followed by an explosion. The windows filled with a green light that lasted for several seconds.

“TWILIGHT!” the boy cried out.

From the plank, Sissel could see the door leading into the tree; it looked like the door of a stable in that it consisted of two individual doors, top and bottom, and there was a picture of a lit candle on the top one. The next moment, the door burst open, and a dark grey pony ran out. A dark grey pony with green eyes wearing an eyepatch over his right eye and wearing a black vest and a hat that matched the other two.

The pony leapt up and into the wagon, onto a part apparently devoid of tools. “It’s done! Let’s move quickly, before anypony shows up!”

The two ponies reared up and whinnied before galloping off, taking the wagon and the dark gray newcomer with them. Sissel was too stunned by the rush of events to jump into the wagon wheel before it was hopelessly out of his reach. The three ponies and their cargo sped off into the night, quickly enough to throw another board, which landed leaning up against the tree not far from his board.

_Something’s going down, I can feel it. And I’m not the kind to leave a lady hanging. I better check out what’s up. Maybe they’ll know where I am._

_…Why did it just now occur to me that ponies don’t usually wear black hats? Or, for that matter, hats at all? Or vests? Or eyepatches? …Or talk? Like, actual **talk** talk._

_This is getting really weird._

It had been quite a while since Sissel had had to use his powers the way he did that one night that no longer existed, but thankfully he quickly found he hadn’t gotten rusty. With a thought, his vision was washed in the red of the Ghost World as time stopped around him. He was relieved to find one constant between home and here was a plentiful supply of cores around. The newly dropped plank allowed him an easy step from the first plank to the handle of the lower door. Taking a quick look inside, he found what looked like a hanging light just in reach. He quickly hopped to it. _I should be able to see the source of the commotion just fine from here,_ he thought. With that in mind, he switched back to the world of the living.

The colors returned, allowing him to clearly see the hollow tree’s main room. Large amounts of large nooks were carved into the wooden walls and filled with a large number of books and a few scrolls, suggesting the function of bookshelves, with a plain wooden ladder reaching the highest nooks leaning up against it. Just how many books there were reminded him of something Lynne told him about once called a… “library,” he thought it was? He wasn’t really paying attention at the time, but the word seemed like a good fit. A round table stood in the center of the room, with a bust of a pony head standing tall in the middle, and a few small piles of books sitting on it. A stray breeze from a high broken window ( _The gray pony probably entered through there._ ) threw a scroll to the floor.

He was guessing the unicorn with wings lying on the ground, surrounded by a spread of spilled books and with a giant scorch mark on her chest, wasn’t supposed to be there.

…

A unicorn. With wings. A lavender unicorn with a deep purple mane that looked like a human haircut, complete with a highlight stripe. With wings.

_I’ve seen some weird things, but a unicorn’s pretty high on the list. I’m pretty sure they aren’t supposed to be real. I need to remember to ask Detective Jowd about it… when I find him again._

Though the bigger shock was the creature next to the unicorn, who was a giant purple lizard-like… thing with green spines, who was shaking the unicorn.

“Twilight! Twilight, wake up!” the creature was calling. Sissel noticed that the young boy’s voice he heard before was coming from him, and that he could feel the tones of sorrow in it. “Please get up, Twilight. You gotta! You can’t be… can’t be…”

He broke down into tears before he could finish, but Sissel figured he could complete the sentence. A quick look into the ghost world confirmed he was correct.

Dead.

_Whatever that creature is, he’s like a child. And if her death’s making him cry, she has to be really important to him. I could probably find out where I am from somebody else, but… a young woman dead in the evening like this… This brings up memories. I haven’t had to use that little trick of mine for who knows how long… but if I’m going to start again, no better place to start than here. Now if I can just get to her corpse…_

Switching back to the Ghost World, he was pleased to find that several books on the shelves had cores he could use, as well as a few of the shelves themselves; why they and not others he wasn’t sure, but he didn’t bug himself thinking of such things. Moving along the array, he arrived at the shelf closest to the scroll that had fallen earlier, which was angled so if it unrolled, it would be close to the pony’s body. Just what he needed, but there weren’t enough cores between him and the scroll.

He looked up at the cores on some of the books on the shelf and got an idea. Moving to a book and flipping back to the world of the living, he executed a manipulative ghost trick, causing the book to slide off the shelf and land with a thud on the floor next to the scroll; the purple scaly creature’s sobs were apparently loud enough to keep him from noticing. From the book, he hopped to the scroll and caused it to unfurl.

_Little closer, little closer…_

The unrolling paper came to a stop a few inches from her head. The lizard-thing was just now noticing as he stopped time and reached out to her.

* * *

Upon possessing the pony girl’s corpse, Sissel quickly located her soul, a brightly burning blue flame, much like the many other souls he had seen before, before they remembered who they were. It looked like she wasn’t awake yet; given it had only been a minute or two since she died, this was not surprising.

But how does one address the soul of a pony? A unicorn pony with wings?

_Might as well go with the way I know best._ “Uh… hello there. You awake?”

“……”

“Yeah, I know, it’s not easy, but we got work to do, so… up and at ‘em.”

For a few moments, he thought she wasn’t going to wake up and he’d settle for just moving on by himself, but this time the soul spoke up. “…Wha…? Where…? W-Who am I…?”

_Finally._ “I don’t really know myself,” he replied. “I just got here. However, that lizard kid guy was calling you ‘Twilight,’ so I… guess that’s your name? I’d guess that you work here in this library.”

“Twilight… Twilight…” She sounded like she was mulling it over. “…Wait, I… I think it’s coming back to me…!”

There was a flash of light, and the ball of flame was replaced with the shape of the pony whose corpse they were now in.

“I’m Twilight Sparkle! I’m the librarian here and… and…” She calmed down, and looked inquisitively at him. “…and why am I talking to a cat? And… how is the cat _talking_?”

“And why am I talking to a purple pony? And how is the _pony_ talking?” he snarkily replied. “I mean, I’ve talked to a dog before, the bravest and most loyal dog you’ll ever know, but a pony?”

“Well of course ponies talk! All ponies talk!” she countered. “I’ve never seen a _cat_ talk before, though.”

“Oh boy…” _Something tells me I’m more lost than I thought._

Twilight looked around at the Ghost World. “This is strange. If this wasn’t her style at all, I would think Pinkie Pie was playing a prank on me.”

“Right now, we have more important things to worry about than practical jokes.” _Like the fact that you’re dead._

“Wait, I’m _dead_?!”

Sissel visibly recoiled. _Right, I keep forgetting, ghosts communicate by thought…!_

“B-But how can I be dead?! I… I can’t remember how I…!”

“That sort of thing happens, Twilight Sparkle. All ghosts lose their memories when they die, but they usually come back quickly. Well, except for the last few moments; there’s no telling how long it takes to get those back.”

“How would you know?! Are you dead too?!”

“Yes. My name’s Sissel.”

“Sissel… Never heard that name before…” She released a resigning sigh. “I suppose you’re here to guide me to the afterlife, huh…? Didn’t think I would go this quickly… Wish I could say goodbye to my friends…”

“Now hold on there.”

“Huh?”

“I suppose I could be considered a ‘guide’ of sorts, but I’m not guiding you to the afterlife. Instead, I’m guiding you back in time.”

“OK, sorry, but you’re not making any sense. What do you mean ‘back in time’?”

“Thanks to some misadventures back home, I have what are called ‘powers of the dead.’ I know them mostly as ‘ghost tricks.’ These tricks let me possess and manipulate inanimate objects… and when I possess a corpse that’s been dead for less than a day, I can travel back in time to four minutes before that person’s death.”

“Wait, four minutes before…! Ghosts can _time travel_?!”

“Some of them. Different ghosts get different powers. And one of mine gives me a chance to change fate and prevent people from dying. And if I don’t succeed? Then I can just try again, as many times as it takes.”

“So, if I’m a ghost now, does that mean…?”

“No, I don’t think you have powers of the dead. They’re caused by radiation from a meteorite that landed in a park in my hometown, and no piece of it is even near here.”

“Oh…” She put a hoof to her forehead, to the side of her horn. “This is all so confusing…”

“I’ve learned it’s something best learned by doing.”

“Wait…”

_This unicorn likes waiting a lot, doesn’t she…?_

“I heard that, you know,” she lightly scolded.

“!! Dangit, I really need to work on how to keep my thoughts to myself…!”

“Look,” she started to explain. “I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around all this. I’m dead, my memories are a bit of a jumble, there is apparently a ghost cat telling me it can time travel even though the best spell I could find for that was one-use-only and only lasted for a few minutes… I keep wishing this is all some bad dream and I’m going to wake up any moment. At least then it’ll make sense. But… I don’t think I can dream of Spike crying like he is now… so this has to be real…”

“Spike?” _I’m guessing that’s the name of that lizard-guy…_

“Yeah, my assistant. And he’s not a lizard. He’s a dragon.”

“…OK, now I _know_ I’m nowhere near home. The sooner we get you back to life, the better.”

“But wait…”

_Are we ever going to get started!?_

“Sorry, just… assuming I accept your story, then… why would you try to save me? I know, it sounds like a bit of a dumb question, don’t look a gift pony in the mouth and all that, but… you don’t seem like that type that would just go and rewind time like that for just anypony.”

“…I’m lost, Twilight Sparkle. I am a kitten that’s far, far away from home with no idea how he got where he is now. But despite being lost, I somehow found myself outside your house. I don’t believe in fate – after all, I’ve spent a lot of time changing it – but something led me here, and it’s telling me you’re the… pony, I suppose… that can help me get back to my family. But we’re both going to have a hard time with that if you’re dead. And that’s why I’m going to save you. I don’t use lives for bargaining chips, but those are my reasons.”

“…Just that? Just because I’m useful to you?”

“I know a girl about your age I met after my death. We agreed to use each other to fulfill our own goals, and we ended up as friends by the end.” As best as his cat face could, he gave a small smile. “I see no reason why it can’t work again.”

“Use each other? What could I use you for?”

“You were murdered in your home and place of work tonight. For some reason, someone wanted you dead. Even if you were alive, you’d have a hard time finding out who that someone was on your own. But me? Only people I’ve saved the lives of with my ghost tricks can hear me, much less have a chance of seeing me, but I can see them. It’ll make investigating a lot easier.”

“I see… So, you’ll help me find out who killed me if I help you get back home?”

“Exactly. We’ve spent enough time as it is. We can talk more after you’ve come back to life.”

“This is crazy,” she thought out loud. “None of this makes any sense.”

“We’re talking about the powers of the dead here, Twilight Sparkle,” he replied, bringing up a memory of an old friend as he spoke. “It’s not supposed to make sense.”

After several moments, she let out another sigh. “If I can believe in Pinkie Sense, why not in ‘powers of the dead?’ Let’s do this, Sissel.”

“Let’s start this trick then! Back in time, to four minutes before your murder!”

* * *

**4 Minutes  
** 8:16 pm - Golden Oaks Library  
 **Before** **D** **eath**

“Whoa…” Twilight expressed in wonder, looking around the library and seeing herself, still alive if frozen in time due to being in the Ghost World. “So this is…?”

“The land of four minutes before your death, yes. It’s not surprising that you managed to tag along, by the way. Happens to pretty much every conscious ghost I do this with.”

“So, we’re going to stop myself from dying, huh?”

“Yep. First we watch it all play out without interfering, and then we use what we see to figure out how we’re going to save you.”

“Have you… had to do this a lot?”

“At least a dozen times. It was a very rough night.”

“For my sake, I’m resisting the urge to ask more questions right now.”

“You’re as smart as you look, I’ll give you that. OK, time’s going to start flowing again. Keep your eyes peeled for any leads.”

“Right.”

_The inside of the library was peaceful. Twilight Sparkle was sitting at the central table, reading over a book lying open on it. She was flanked on both sides by large piles of books – a little more than some light reading for one evening, by her standards. Still, there were no further plans for the night and the library was closed for business, so she decided to just enjoy it._

_She attempted to shift her position to something a little more comfortable, only to accidentally jar one of the piles with a foreleg, causing the top book to fall down and land on the floor nearby. “Oh…” she sighed before her horn started to glow the fine magenta of her magic. The book, now encased in her telepathic aura, lifted into the air and glided back to its place atop the pile. Satisfied, Twilight dismissed the magic and resumed her reading._

_A few moments later, Spike entered from the kitchen. “Still reading?” he sighed._

_“I just got this shipment of new books for the library in this afternoon,” she replied, not even looking at him as her telekinetic spell shut the book she was looking at and moved it to the top of the pile on her right while replacing it with the top book of the left pile, the one that had fallen off only a few moments ago. “I have to make sure each one is classified and sorted correctly before I can put them on the shelves.”_

_“Twilight, those are hand-me-downs from the Royal Canterlot Library. They’re **already** sorted. I can see the Dew Decimal numbers on them.”_

_“Well, uh…” Twilight’s mind raced. “I-I’m just… making sure, that’s all!”_

_Spike wasn’t convinced – he knew her well enough to know that she just wanted an excuse to read – but decided to humor her anyway. “Fine fine, just don’t stay up until the wee hours of the night again.”_

_“You need to stop worrying about that, Spike,” she replied. “My bedtime has always been on my schedule.”_

_Spike noticed a mug sitting next to the book piles and picked it up. “Want a refill on your apple juice?”_

_“That’d be great, thanks!”_

_“Back in a jiff!” he said as he hurried back into the kitchen closing the door behind him._

_Twilight read in peace for several more moments before, suddenly, there was a loud crash. “What-?!” She snapped her head up to see somepony had broken through one of the upper windows, scattering several glass shards to the floor. “W-Who are you?!”_

_She had never seen the intruder before. He was a dark grey Earth pony wearing a fedora, vest, and eyepatch, all black. His piercing green eyes looked down at her. “There you are,” he said, his voice gruff and vindictive, as he hopped from his position on the windowsill down to the floor with a loud thud. “It’s time we settled this.”_

_Instinctively, Twilight backed a couple steps away from him. “What are you talking about?! I’ve never seen you before!”_

_That information quickly became lower priority when the intruder reached into his vest and pulled out, for all appearances, a large crystal that glowed a rather sickly green. He reared up on his back legs as he pulled the crystal back, as if getting ready to throw it._

_“Glory to the true ruler!” he shouted._

_It only took a moment or two after seeing it for Twilight to recognize it: a magical concussion grenade, of the sort optimized for attacking living creatures while leaving inanimate matter mostly intact. She got in position to defend herself, quickly running over spells she knew in her head to find the best way to counter the attack-_

_“Ahh!”_

_The sound threw her off guard. She looked in its direction to see Spike had reentered the room and stood frozen in the doorway, the refilled mug dropped and its content spilled in shock. “Spike!” she called. “Get out of here!”_

_That moment of distraction was all the assailant needed. He threw the crystal straight at her, and a massive green flash, with a matching gust of wind, filled the room._

_When it subsided, the crystal was gone, its structure destroyed after its energy was spent, and Twilight’s body, having been thrown backwards a few feet by the blast, lay sprayed among a mess of books that had been knocked over by the wind, a massive burn centered right over her heart._

_“TWILIGHT!” Spike cried out in horror. He ran over to her still form as the assassin ran unopposed for the door._

Sissel froze time again. “And that’s the last four minutes of your life.”

“Blasted in my own library… Well, there’s worse ways to go, I suppose…”

“I’ve only got one question myself. What was that thing with the books? You know, with them floating like that? Pretty sure books don’t float in mid-air.”

“That? That was just my magic.”

“…Magic.”

“Yes. Magic. It’s a well-documented and commonly used form of power. Everypony knows about it. How lost do you have to be to have never heard of _magic_ before?”

“Far _far_ more lost than I originally thought, apparently. I am going to have a _lot_ of questions when you’re alive again. Anyways, it seems to me the vital point was when that Spike guy came in at the end. I’m sure your… magic would have saved you if you weren’t distracted.”

“Hey, don’t blame Spike for that! He didn’t know that that would distract me!”

“Calm down, I’m not blaming him. I’m just saying, if we can keep him from entering the room, that’ll probably keep you alive. Let’s get back to the beginning of these four minutes and start changing fate.”

* * *

**[Trick Time!]**

As with all his trips to the past, Sissel found himself where he was when he started time jumping, the location of Twilight’s future corpse, watching Twilight now at her reading.

_“So, what should I do?”_ Twilight’s voice asked in his mind.

_“I don’t think you can do anything by yourself, since you’re just a normal ghost,”_ Sissel replied. _“So just sit back and follow my lead.”_

_“OK, you’re the expert here.”_

_“Alright, if I can find some way to bar or block the door after Spike goes back in, that should change your fate, at least a little. Let’s see what I can do.”_

For the moment, though, he was rather isolated; none of the cores that were around were close enough for him to reach. Then Twilight shifted her position and knocked the book down right next to him. Seeing his chance, he moved over to the book as she started to levitate it back up.

As the book was put back on top of the pile, Sissel looked towards the kitchen door just in time enough to see Spike enter. His attention, however, was more focused above it. The stairway that was aside the room lead up to a door on a balcony above the kitchen door, but the balcony was clear.

_“…Well, so much for that plan. I can’t see anything here I can block the door with.”_

_“Well, even if it **was** blocked,”_ Twilight’s ghost added, _“I probably would’ve been able to clear the obstruction in time. And that door doesn’t lock either.”_

_“Hmm…”_ Sissel mused. _“To keep a dragon from going through a door… If I can’t stop the door, maybe I can stop the dragon.”_

_“What do you have in mind?”_

Sissel shifted over to Twilight’s juice mug beside the book piles, a simple trip once Twilight pulled the book he was possessing down into range. Waiting out the conversation, he smiled to himself when Spike picked up the mug and took it – and the two ghosts – with him into the kitchen.

_“You keep a mug for apple juice?”_ Sissel asked, curious.

_“It was originally for coffee,”_ Twilight explained, _“but then we found out me and coffee weren’t a very good combination.”_

_“Heh. I think I’d like to hear about **that** sometime.”_

Feeling her embarrassment, Sissel decided to leave it at that and focus on the kitchen; Twilight spent a good amount of time after Spike left reading, but it wouldn’t be long before the assassin entered the scene. Like the previous room, the kitchen was mostly made out of wood, with several holes in the walls filled with glass to serve as windows. Counters lined the edges of the room, with cabinets hanging from the walls above them, looking much like how the phantom expected a kitchen to look, including the requisite ingredients and utensils. Several aforementioned utensils hung from hooks, and the central island, which looked to actually be part of the tree sheered flat, had a bowl containing a large amount of assorted fruit.

Spike moved over to a refrigerator and placed the mug on the counter beside it. As Spike opened the fridge and dug into it, Sissel took notice of a door on the side. _“Where does that door go?”_

_“That one?”_ Twilight answered. _“It leads to the basement.”_

_“Basement?”_

_“Yeah, I use it mostly for storage. Library archives, that sort of thing.”_

_“Hmm… I got an idea, but you’re not going to like it.”_

_“What? What am I not going to like?”_

Deciding to not answer, Sissel moved from the mug across several of the hanging utensils to a large hard-plastic salad serving fork. As Spike was busy pulling out a pitcher of apple juice and refilled the mug, the ghost started swinging the serving fork back and forth until it got enough force to fly off the hook and land on the island with a soft clatter. Spike looked quickly at the sound of the noise, only to find no one there, and so he shrugged and resumed putting the pitcher back in the refrigerator. Since he could move between objects only when in the Ghost World where time was stopped, Sissel reflected that he pretty much waited until Spike was looking the other way before moving to the fruit bowl just for the heck of it.

Spike was turning and heading back towards the main room when from there came a sound of shattering glass. The dragon was immediately on the alert. “Twilight?” he lightly asked towards the door, though not at a volume she would be likely to hear him at.

**[Time Till Death: _3_ ]**

_“Drat, the assassin here’s!”_ Sissel mentally shouted. _“No time to waste!”_

_“What am I not going to like, Sissel?”_ Twilight asked forcefully.

His response consisted of the trick he could do with the fruit bowl: rock it. As Spike started stepping briskly back towards the door, various fruits spilled all over the floor. But despite the variety, they all seemed to have a major thing in common.

They were all very round.

“Whoa-whoa-WHOA!” Spike cried as he stepped on an apparently quite hard pear and lost his balance. Attempting to regain it, he then stepped on a peach, then an apple, then a pineapple, then the rest of the cornucopia as he slip-sided away from the main room door towards the door leading to the basement, having dropped the mug, shattering it and spilling its contents, at the beginning of the whole ordeal. Sissel quickly beat him there by moving across the fruit (which, being plucked from their trees and bushes, reclassified them as dead, allowing most of them cores) and opening the door for him. He closed the door again once Spike was through it, the purple dragon tumbling head over heels down the stairs until he reached the bottom, where he lay in a groaning daze.

Twilight’s spirit was agape. _“W-What…? What did…?”_

_“I told you you weren’t going to like it,”_ Sissel casually replied.

_“Why did you have to do that?!”_ she shouted. _“Dragons are sturdier than most creatures, sure, but he’s just a baby, and you tricked him into **falling down the stairs?!** ”_

_“Look, if he dies, I’ll go back to four minutes before **his** death, OK?!”_ he exasperatingly replied. _“Right now, we’ve got more important things to worry about! I managed to keep you from getting distracted by him, so you probably don’t die instantly, but the assassin’s still going to be there, so we have to get back there quickly before he kills you anyway!”_

_“……”_

_“…When we get back, I’ll apologize, how’s that?”_

_“…Fine. But **you’re** paying for his doctor bill.”_

_…I have no idea how she intends for me to do that…_

_“I’ll put you to work or something, we’ll discuss it later. As you said, we have more important things to worry about!”_

**[Fate Changed!]**

Thankfully, getting back to the main room wasn’t a big problem. Following the fruit back to the counter, followed by moving across the utensils and drawers (and occasionally having to stop to open a cabinet door to reach far enough) allowed him to reach the door handle again.

“Glory to the true ruler!” the assassin shouted, aiming the explosive death crystal at Twilight and hurling it with all his might.

Twilight’s horn glowed again as she cast her spell, forming a magenta bubble around her. The crystal detonated on contact with it, scattering the pile of books on the table across the floor, but the pony herself was unharmed.

The explosive gone, she dismissed her shield. “That was a grenade! You just tried to _kill_ me! Who are you?!”

She found she couldn’t relax, however, as the assassin, upon seeing his first attempt failed, growled and pulled another crystal out of his vest instead of answering.

_“He’s got **more** of them?!”_ Twilight’s ghost shouted.

_“And he probably has enough that he’d get a kill in before he runs out,”_ Sissel speculated. He quickly began scanning the room of anything that could be of use. _“We need to find some way to stop him…!”_

_“I can’t believe I’m suggesting this, but… maybe you can… throw books from the shelves at him?”_

_“I’m a ghost, not a poltergeist. They wouldn’t reach far enough.” Think, think, think…!_

Finally, he noticed the ladder leaning against one of the shelves near the assailant. _That could do it._ Unfortunately, at that moment, the grey pony threw the crystal he was holding; Twilight again managed to raise a shield to protect herself, but the large breeze the projectile generated threw several of the books from the shelves, scattering the cores among them too wide for Sissel to reach it. _Dang…! Now what...?_

Then he noticed that some of the dropped books formed a way across the floor to the central table, which still had some of the books that were at the bottom of the piles and a core in the tip of the horsehead figure’s muzzle. He followed this path and at the end, as the assassin threw his second round and Twilight deflected it to the far wall, did a trick with the horsehead to rotate the whole table around to face the other way.

_“OK,”_ Twilight mused. _“I should probably get that fixed.”_

Again ignoring her, Sissel instead took delight in that the books on the floor reachable from the new position of the books on the table now lead to the ladder. He wasted no time in zipping across this line of cores, up the shelves, and settled in the ladder as he waited for the right moment.

He didn’t have to wait long as the assailant pulled out and aimed back another crystal grenade. _Now!_

He tilted the ladder over.

Just as the assassin attempted to throw again, the ladder landed on him, catching his head between the top two rungs. Startled by this sudden contact, he released the grenade too early in the swing, causing it to pop up and land on the ground right in front of him. The force of the explosion blew off the top half of the ladder and bodily launched him backwards hard into the bookshelf behind him, which still had most of its books on it. He hung there for a few seconds like a fly hit by a windshield on a moving car before sliding a little and falling flat on his stomach, head framed by the broken top half of the ladder. He moaned from pain before several books from the shelf fell off and knocked him on the head, causing him to collapse and stop moving.

_“I… I think that did it!”_ Twilight declared. _“He seems to be unconscious!”_

_“Distractions can be such dangerous things, can’t they?”_ Sissel slyly noted.

Twilight’s magical aura surrounded the assassin’s vest and pulled it off. “I’ll take that,” she said as she floated it over to a corner away from them. She was damaged, likely from being battered by objects that were flying about in the winds, but very much alive.

_“And that should be that!”_ Sissel declared. _“With that pony down for the count, the danger is gone and your death has been prevented.”_

** [Fate Averted!] **

As Sissel pulled them back into the Ghost World, Twilight was looking thoughtful. “Um… I’ve got a question.”

“What is it?”

“Do your fate changes usually involve hurting other ponies to save someone?”

“Well, we don’t have ponies quite like you where I’m from, but besides that, no, not usually.”

“Then why did you have to…? That pony who attacked me, I could understand, but…”

“Look, I’m sorry I had to hurt Spike like that. I’m still a little disoriented, so I couldn’t see a better solution in the heat of things.”

“Well I am grateful for you saving my life and everything, so I’ll accept your apology, but I expect you to apologize to Spike too.”

“I can’t make promises, since I can only communicate with people I’ve met after they died, but if I get the chance, I will.”

“Fair enough. So… what’s next?”

“What’s next is we go back to the present. A new present formed from this trick of fate, where you’re alive.”

“Great! But… if I’m alive in this new present, what happens to me?”

“If it’s anything like back home, your still-alive self will retain your memories from your time dead at least.”

“I see…”

“Well, time’s a-wasting, as they say. Back to the present!”

* * *

**[8:22 PM]**

Sissel arrived in the part of the ladder broken around the unconscious assassin’s neck. He looked over to Twilight, who seemed to be lying down to conserve her strength. _Having a murderer come after you is a very tiring experience, I would imagine._

“Twilight!” Spike called as he burst through the kitchen door, covered in bruises, and ran to his companion. “Are you alright?! What happened?!”

“It’s… complicated,” Twilight replied. “Never mind that, what happened to you?”

“I, uh, slipped,” he answered, apparently trying to keep most of his pride by withholding some of the details. He looked around the library. The entire thing was a wreck; nothing was in place. Books were scattered across the floor, the shattered glass from the window had gotten everywhere, and even the table was completely turned around. “Gosh,” he thought aloud. “It looks like Rainbow Dash steered a hurricane through here. …Huh? Is that another pony over there?”

“Don’t get too close, Spike. That pony tried to kill me.”

“ _Tried to kill you?!_ ” he shouted. “Why would anypony try to kill you?!”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “But first things first. I got some spare rope up in my room; I need you to get it and tie that pony up before he wakes up.”

“Are you sure it’s OK to leave you alone like this, Twilight-?”

“Spike!” Her voice communicated just how urgent this task was.

“OK, OK!” he replied. He ran up the stairs, taking two at a time, and hurried through the door.

She heaved a sigh, probably trying to relax and sort her thoughts out. Given she had her memories of an alternate history where she died only a few minutes ago, that wasn’t surprising at all.

_Maybe I can help with that. Besides, now that the danger is past, I’ve got a lot of questions._

A moment later, Twilight heard a sound and looked up just in time to see the central table spin back around to its original position. “Ah… There you are, Sissel.”

He reached out to her through the Ghost World. “Glad to see you remember me.”

“As you said, I remember dying. Not the most pleasant thing to have to remember, you can imagine.”

“I remember dying from being hit by a meteorite fragment. Believe me, there are worse ways to go.”

“So… now’s when we start using each other?”

“Just what I was thinking. Let’s start by you answering a simple question: where am I?”

_Twilight Sparkle gave me an answer. There was a lot I needed to wrap my head around._

_I was in a town called Ponyville, in a land called Equestria. Most of the inhabitants were talking ponies. Equestria was ruled by a pair of princesses that lived in a castle in a city called Canterlot, which wasn’t too far from Ponyville._

_There were three kinds of ponies – Earth ponies, pegasus ponies, and unicorns. Earth ponies were physically strong and tough compared to the others, pegasi had wings and could fly, and unicorns had horns and could use magic. There was also the rare fourth pony type, the alicorn – which Twilight Sparkle was one of – that combined the strengths of the other three species._

_Twilight Sparkle also told me about her five best friends – Earth ponies Applejack and Pinkie Pie, pegasi Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, and unicorn Rarity. Though thought was instant in the mental connection we were using, she did her best to keep explanations brief and only gave me enough of an overview about each of them, but still enough for me to work with._

_And finally, there was a quick explanation of “cutie marks.” These images that appeared on a pony’s flanks after they found what made them happiest in life. She showed me hers, a six-pointed star, which indicated her passion for magic. I played around with ideas of what cutie marks of the people I knew looked like, though I could only imagine Lynne’s being a falling anvil for whatever reason._

_As amazing as it all was, though, I couldn’t help but focus on one major detail:_

_Nothing was familiar at all._

_I was very far from home, far enough it might as well been a world away._

_My body was missing._

_And I had no idea how I was going to get back._


	2. 8:29 PM

_Spike returned from the upstairs room with a rope and hog-tied the dark grey pony. After that, Twilight sent him to fetch the police; he was worried about leaving her alone after what had just happened, which was perfectly understandable, but she assured him she’d be fine._

_Don’t get me wrong, I’d save her if she died again. I just hope she wouldn’t get used to it like Lynne did that night. After all, once I go home, there won’t be any tricked-out ghosts around to rewind her fate again._

_While we were waiting for the police, Twilight started putting the books back on the shelf and tidying up. I knew from my time with Detective Jowd that she should’ve just left them there to preserve the crime scene, but they seemed to help her calm down some little nerves she had and I wasn’t going to argue with that._

_And it’s not like I needed any clues the mess left behind. After all, I was there._

_Eventually Spike returned with some ponies dressed in what looked like police officer uniforms, only of course outfitted for ponies. I’m never going to get used to that. After pointing them to the assassin, who still hadn’t recovered consciousness amazingly enough, Twilight asked Spike to go upstairs and get back into bed; he was up far past his bedtime, apparently. But he refused; he was simply too worried about someone trying to kill Twilight again and he insisted on helping. She told him to heat up some apple cider for her if he was going to insist on staying up late. Funny, I didn’t take her as the type to drink when facing a crisis…_

Twilight watched as two police ponies escorted out the still unconscious assassin and threw him into the back of a barred wagon. Sissel got the impression from all the squeeks and creeks that the wagon hadn’t seen use in quite a while. _Judging from what Twilight told me, though, murder certainly isn’t the most common thing in Equestria. Which leaves the question of **who** in this country would **want** to kill someone… or somepony, in this case._

Then he heard something Twilight said after the police left. She had stepped outside to watch them leave and had happened to look over beside her door.

“…Where’d these planks come from?”

_“…Oh, right!”_ Sissel exclaimed, mentally facepalming – or perhaps facepawing – himself. _“With all the commotion, it slipped my mind.”_

“What?” Twilight replied. “You know where they came from?”

_“I found myself possessing one of them when I recovered consciousness shortly before meeting you. There was another wagon parked in front tonight filled with carpenter’s tools and things, and in your original fate your killer jumped in it and rode away. I suppose now its drivers ran off after hearing all the racket.”_

Twilight brought the planks inside with her telekinesis. While she was being so generous as to bring an object along, Sissel took the chance to possess one of them, though he wasn’t sure if it was the one he possessed when he woke up. “So these fell off the wagon of the ponies that wanted me dead.” She was taking them though the kitchen, past Spike, and into the basement. “These could be important clues. If I can find out what sort of wood this is, maybe I can figure out where the wagon was from.”

Although the sight of every new room in this hollowed-out tree astounded Sissel, the basement did so to a higher degree. It was rather different from the main room. While there were a few full shelves across from the bottom of the stairs, most of the rest of the space was taken up with tables bearing laboratory equipment, with machines and little glass containers so different from each other he couldn’t find the words to describe them. He was reminded of the junkyard superintendent’s office back home, though this one didn’t have a recreated “murder machine” in its basement. _“I’m… not entirely sure I follow that.”_

“Last I checked, Sissel, Equestria didn’t have too many construction companies; each one has a stake of land they cut all their own wood from, from the trees that grow there,” Twilight explained. “If we can find out which of those areas had the trees these planks came from, we’ll know which company cut them… and thus, who owns the wagon you fell off of, so to speak.”

_“Well that’s convenient,”_ he noted. As Twilight set the planks down on a clear area on a table, he hopped over to a nearby beaker. _“I don’t feel like it’s our only lead though…”_

“It’s not,” she replied as she telekinetically shuffled stuff around. “There’s also those crystal grenades. Those were lethal magical weapons. They’re outright illegal in most parts of Equestria, so where could he possibly get them from, especially so _many_? Sadly, the police took his vest for evidence when they took him into custody, so what we have left is the plank, so that’s what I’m going to investigate.”

_“Don’t mind me then,”_ he replied. _“Your turn to do some tricks of your own.”_

He was slightly offput by the sheer enthusiasm of her grin.

_I wasn’t sure what exactly she was doing to those planks. The best description I could come up with was “science.” I was slightly more concerned with not being in any of the equipment she was using; objects don’t have nerves that could feel, but if she put acid or something in one, I wasn’t taking any chances._

_I thought about what sort of information the wood would lead to. That assassin didn’t get his transportation from nowhere, after all. Perhaps he stole it or he’s connected to the building company somehow._

_The assassin… I spent some idle time thinking about that pony._

_“Glory to the true ruler!”_

_From what I knew, the two princesses Celestia and Luna were the rightful rulers of Equestria. Obviously, he disagreed, enough to kill Celestia’s personal student over it (a detail Twilight gave me earlier with great pride and enthusiastic detail)._

_He might have been a hitman for someone else, like two other dubious individuals I had seen, but he didn’t match their style at all. Those two ponies hitched to his getaway wagon shared headwear, so unless they’re making a fashion statement, they have to be connected._

_Maybe he’s their boss, or they’re part of an organized crime ring? Those were just guesses, though. Nothing I could really go by. They were part of the same organization, that was certain, but what type of organization? Did the other two ponies share his anti-princess beliefs? Where did he get all those exploding crystals?_

_It was in thinking how many different ways that pony was strange that I realized another oddity._

_“…You know, I just thought of something.”_

“What?” Twilight asked in reply, not looking up from her point of focus. Score one for multitasking.

_“We never looked at that assassin’s cutie mark. Come to think of it, I don’t remember even seeing one, even in the places there should’ve been one.”_

“That’s right, I don’t remember him having one either. Strange… He looked older than me, and almost all ponies find their cutie marks by my age. A ‘blank flank’ as an adult is a statistical anomaly.”

_“Sounds like a clue if I ever heard one.”_

Twilight chuckled. “You’re starting to sound like a detective.”

_“I’m the pet of one.”_

“I see. Must have picked up a lot of things from her.”

_“Him, actually.”_

“Ah, sorry. Ponies have a very high female-to-male ratio, so we tend to assume someone’s female.”

_“Whatever. I picked up a few things, yes. I’m mostly self-taught.”_

“A cat teaching itself to be a detective?”

_“It was a very strange night.”_

“You’ve mentioned this night before. I’m not one to pry, but I am curious. Rough, strange… What was that night all about?”

_“It was the night I died.”_

Silence reigned for several long moments before Twilight Spoke again. “I… see…”

_Well I suppose that **used** to be true. I did die that night, but when I managed to rewind time back ten years, I ended up dying on that day instead. I wasn’t sure how to explain that, so I decided to leave it out._

_Time travel can be very tricky sometimes. It really didn’t make sense. But I’m not one to complain about something that worked anyway._

_That wasn’t the last of the small talk. Her testing apparently had a few lulling parts where she didn’t need to pay strict attention for a while._

“So, you never heard of magic before tonight, right?” she asked inquisitively.

_“Right.”_

“Honestly, I’m more surprised that you _don’t_ know about it, and not just because it’s everywhere in Equestria.”

_“Why’s that?”_

“Well, aren’t your ghost tricks magic?”

…That was a very good question, one Sissel didn’t have an immediate answer to. Though he came up with one quickly. _“Well, does your magic come from a meteorite of unknown origin crashing down in your hometown’s park?”_

“Well… no, unicorn magic is internal-“

_“Then it’s not the same. Even if the tricks are magic as you know it, I don’t really see how that makes any difference in how they work.”_

“Sort of like Discord’s magic then…” she thought out loud.

_“Discord?”_ he asked.

“He’s the spirit of chaos and disharmony, but not by your definition of spirit. It’s hard to explain, which is… rather standard with him.”

_“Not my definition of ‘spirit’… You mean he’s not a ghost?”_

“No, he’s… the best description I can think of is the equuspomorphic personification of chaos. As I said, it’s hard to explain.”

_“No kidding. My head hurts.” Granted, that mostly because I don’t think “equisspomorphic” is even a word…_

“It makes sense if you know him. Anyways, he has his own unique magic that doesn’t work the same way unicorn magic does. In fact, I don’t think even _he_ knows how his magic works. That’s what I mean when I said your ghost tricks were kind of like it.”

_“I see… I don’t really know how my powers of the dead work either, just how to use them. And different ghosts get different powers, but heck if I know how to determine who gets what.”_

“I’d love the chance to study them closer myself, but we don’t really have the time tonight.”

_“Yeah, being murdered in your own home does tend to suggest rearranging your priorities.”_

“Exactly.”

_Spike came down a short while later carrying a mug in his claws. Hopefully it wasn’t the one I made him drop earlier when I threw fruit all over the place. I really should apologize to the kid, but two things. One, I can’t communicate with him directly unless he gained a core, which since he hadn’t died and come along on one of my tricks was a definite no. Two, he didn’t seem to feel like admitting the full extent of his injuries (which seemed to be healing up nicely) to anybody, so… what was a cat to do?_

“Here you go, Twilight,” Spike said as he placed the mug on the table beside her.

“Ahh, thanks, Spike,” she replied. She took telekinetic grip of the ceramic cup and lifted it to her lips, taking a sip of the sweet liquid it contained. “This should keep me perky enough for at least a few more hours. I won't rest until I find out who’s responsible for trying to kill me.”

“You’re going to stay up all night?” he exclaimed. “And I thought _I_ didn’t like my bedtime.”

“This is a special case, Spike,” she answered. “Whoever sent that assassin after me probably knows they failed by now and they might try again, and I intend to be awake for that.”

“But what about the library?” Spike countered. “If you don’t go to bed, you’re not going to be awake enough to open it tomorrow.”

“Then I won’t open it,” Twilight countered right back. “With the smashed-in window, nopony’s going to be surprised if I don’t open. They’d probably be surprised if I _do_ open with a broken window. Spike, really, I know you care about me, but you’re distracting me right now. I need to figure out where this wood came from.”

“…Alright,” he eventually conceded. “You’re the smartest pony I know. If you think it’ll be OK, it’ll be OK. Right?”

“I’ll be fine,” she replied, sipping from her mug again. “I’ve had late-night study sessions before, and this is no different. Except that I’m going to be finding murderers instead of rereading notes.”

_Yep,_ Sissel snarked to himself. _No different._

“OK. I trust you, Twilight,” Spike affirmed. “I’ll be upstairs cleaning up that apple juice spill, so gimme a shout if you need anything.”

“Alright. Thanks for understanding.”

Sissel waited for the baby dragon to be back up and through the basement door before resuming his talk with Twilight. _“So… cider, eh?”_

“Yeah, it’s from Applejack’s farm. We managed to get a few bottles last season.”

_“And the drinking helps you focus?”_

“I wouldn’t say ‘focused,’ no more than I usually do, but it is helping me keep awake.”

_“…Huh.”_

“What is it?” Twilight asked, picking up on the puzzlement in Sissel’s “voice.”

_“I’m not claiming to be an authority on the stuff, and gods know how little I’ve seen anyone actually drink, but I’ve never heard or seen anyone managing to keep awake with alcohol.”_

“…Alcohol?” Now it was Twilight’s turn to be puzzled. “Why would I be drinking alcohol?”

_“Well it’s cider. It’s alcoholic, right?”_

“No it’s not. I’ve been keeping it refrigerated since I got it.”

_“I’m not sure I’m grasping the situation here.”_

“Sweet Apple Acres doesn’t make or sell alcoholic cider. In fact, with how cold I’ve been keeping it, it’s very unlikely it’s going to ferment and _turn_ alcoholic.”

_“Sorry sorry, I just assumed it was alcoholic. Cider’s alcoholic by default where I’m from.”_

“Like how I assumed your owner was female. It’s alright, just a misunderstanding.”

_“Yeah…” OK, that was embarrassing as all hell. If that never comes up again, that would be just great._

Twilight took a step back from the table. “OK, I got all the data I need!” she announced, levitating a book with a large picture of a tree on the cover over to her from one of the shelves. “I should be able to figure out what sort of tree this plank was made from now.”

_“Great!” How long have we even been down here…?!_

It felt like several long moments before Twilight spoke again. “Here it is! According to my calculations and _Know a Tree by More Than Its Fruit: A Complete Guide to Trees and Their Characteristics_ , these planks were made from the trunk of the margrave oak, known to grow primarily in…” She hesitated for a few moments before finishing, most of her initial enthusiasm gone. “…the Everfree Forest.”

_“Everfree Forest, eh?”_ Sissel obliviously commented. _“Sounds like the perfect place for a construction company to get plenty of wood. Who has the logging rights there?”_

“Nopony.”

_“…Come again?”_

“Nopony cuts down trees in the Everfree Forest. Most ponies have the common sense to never go in there, much less try to take anything _out_. And margrave oaks grow in a ring that surrounds the heart of the forest; my friends and I have gone farther in than almost anypony and I’ve _never_ seen any myself.”

Sissel was starting to piece it together. _“In other words, these planks have no business being made of margrave oak wood.”_

“Precisely!” She laid her forelegs on the desk in a sort of manner that gave Sissel the impression of folding arms. “What pony would be _mad_ enough to go into the depths of the Everfree for _wood_? How many of these planks were there in that wagon?”

_“Well I wasn’t exactly keeping count, mysteriously waking up in a foreign land and all…”_

She was looking in entirely the wrong direction, but the feeling in her mind made Sissel know what the glare was intending to communicate immediately.

_“…but I’m pretty sure it was at least half a dozen.”_

“That’s more than one tree worth… and that’s just what was in that wagon. What is so important about this wood that ponies risked their lives in the Everfree Forest for it?”

_“Sounds like the forest is pretty dangerous.”_

“Dangerous? Dangerous doesn’t even begin to describe it. It’s downright unnatural. All of Equestria requires pony magic in some form or another, as I told you earlier. The innate magic of Earth ponies allows crops to grow, animals need to be guided and provided food, pegasi have to use tornados to get water to the weather factories to make clouds for the weather, you get the idea. Ponies do everything. But the Everfree Forest is different; it runs on all by itself. Growing, animals, clouds and weather… It does it all without pony direction.”

_“I’m still having a hard time believing that ponies have to advance nature by itself. I mean, the pegasi manipulating the clouds to change the weather at least makes some sort of sense, but having to remove snow yourself instead of letting it melt, and the ‘running of the leaves’ thing where you make autumn leaves fall by **racing** …”_

“Everything takes care of itself where you come from too?”

_“Yes.”_

“Then you _can’t_ be from anywhere in Equestria… I mean, I know we already knew that, but that just proves it even more. Unless you’re from the Everfree…”

_“ **That** is just impossible. My hometown has a harbor, while from the best of what I can tell, there isn’t an ocean for miles.”_

“Well, one mystery at a time. We’re not going to figure out how you got here just yet. Somehow, my killer had access to wood from the depths of the Everfree Forest, so that’s what I need to investigate.”

_“So what’s our first step?”_

“We need to talk to Fluttershy,” she answered as she started out of the basement and back up the stairs.

Sissel kept pace along the cores around the room until he found his way up to the mop Spike was using to finish cleaning the kitchen floor. He didn’t stay longer than he had to, making his way to the surrounding cabinets. _“The animal lover pegasus?”_

“Her cottage is near the edge of the Everfree Forest. She doesn’t like to think about it very much, but if there was suspicious activity in there, there’s a chance she heard about something. That’s the best path I can think of.”

Spike paused his mopping. “Uh, Twilight, who are you talking to?”

She stopped in her tracks as her mind briefly raced. “Oh, uh, nopony, Spike,” she replied nervously. “Just… talking to myself, like I sometimes do!” She chuckled nervously.

_You’re not fooling anyone, Twilight Sparkle,_ Sissel thought. _You’re about as transparent as I am._

The baby dragon shrugged. “Whatever. So, you’re going out to see Fluttershy? After an attempt on your life?”

“She might have some clues that could point me to who wanted me dead.”

“Twilight, I don’t want to state the obvious, but could it be that the pony that wanted you dead was the one that _broke into the library and tried to kill you_?”

“There’s more to it than that, Spike. Something he said, something about a ‘true ruler.’ As a princess of Equestria, I can’t just ignore this.”

“Well if it’s about rulers, why don’t you just ask Princess Celestia?”

“…” Sissel could see the realization dawn in Twilight’s eyes. “…Ask the princess. Spike, thank you so much for reminding me! I got so wrapped up in investigating this, it didn’t even occur to me to tell the princess about it!”

“You, forget to write a letter to the princess? The one that turned the entire town upside down over one doll when you _couldn’t_ think of a letter to write to her?”

“ _Spike_ , I learned my lesson from that one,” she pressed. “No need to keep bringing it up.”

“OK, OK,” he replied as he propped the mop up against the side of the island. “Want me to take it?”

“Good idea,” she answered.

As they headed back into the library’s main room, Sissel recalled something.

_“I just want to find my own lost memory. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”_

_…Never again,_ he asserted to himself, following them. He didn’t remember those specific events, but after he was told about them it left a bad taste in his mouth. _However I can, I’ll make sure that mistake doesn’t repeat itself. For either of us._

From one of the books, Sissel observed Spike pick up a blank sheet of parchment and dip a feather pen in an ink pot. “Ready,” he announced to Twilight, readying the pen near the paper.

Twilight gave him a nod before she started dictating. “Dear Princess Celestia, I am writing to inform you of a matter of grave importance. This evening, the library was broken into and the perpetrator attempted to take my life. It is only thanks to the help of a ghost named Sissel that-”

“G-Ghost?!” Spike cried, dropping the items he was carrying. Sissel found it amazing how quickly he started shivering. “Th-There’s a _ghost_ around here?!”

“Spike!” Twilight exasperatingly sighed. “Yes, there’s a ghost. I don’t normally put stock into such things, but when one saves your life, that’s pretty good evidence in favor of them existing.”

“W-We’re not being haunted, right?” he nervously asked. Apparently, he hadn’t paid full attention to what she had just said. “I always knew there was something strange about the library being built into a tree!”

“Calm down, Spike!” she replied, attempting to get him to do just that. “The library isn’t haunted. But there is a ghost here. His name is Sissel, and he saved my life.”

It was a few moments before he responded. “…Really? He saved you?”

“Yes. You probably can’t talk to him because of how ghosts… apparently actually work, but I’m sure he can communicate with you in some other way.”

“Like what?”

_“I’ll take that as a cue,”_ Sissel thought to Twilight as he moved over to the horsehead figure again and gave it a turn.

“Whoa!” Spike jumped. “D-Did you see that, Twilight?! The table, it… it turned! All by itself! And without you using your magic!”

“That wasn’t me, Spike,” Twilight explained. “That was Sissel. He’s able to possess objects and do tricks with them like moving or shaking them.”

“Whoa…” This whoa, Sissel noted, was a little more awestruck than the other whoa. ”That’s pretty neat, actually! Though it’s… kinda weird to suddenly have a ghost around, you know.”

“I know. He’s lost and trying to find his way home, and I agreed to help him in exchange for him helping me.”

“Helping you find out who tried to kill you?”

“Yes. I think how he got here has some connection. He arrived here possessing the wood planks the assassin’s compatriots dropped.”

“Well… where’d he come from?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve been so focused on the investigation that I didn’t really think to ask…”

Before the conversation could continue, they heard the sound of fluttering paper. They looked to see the half-written letter laying on the floor beside the feather pen where Spike had dropped them. The page was flapping one end as if there was a slight breeze under it.

“Oh, the letter, right!” Twilight exclaimed. “How do I keep getting on so many tangents tonight?”

_“You’re welcome,”_ Sissel replied as he moved back along the books on the floor from the scroll to the horsehead.

Spike picked the letter and pen up. “Let’s see… ‘It is only thanks to…’” he prompted.

“Ah, right.” Twilight cleared her throat. “It is only thanks to the help of a ghost named Sissel that I am still alive and for the most part unharmed. With this attack fresh on my mind, I can’t seem to find the nerve to sleep tonight, so I’ve decided to investigate and discover the truth behind the attack. I know it’s unwise and will be very dangerous, but I feel I must seek out the cause myself. I shall be fine, as I am both mentally prepared to defend myself against further attack and have faith that Sissel, whose goals seem to line up with mine, will be with me every step of the way. There’s a lot I’ve learned about him already that I really want to tell you, but now is not the time. Who knows what those ponies are plotting in the dark of the night? I’ll keep you updated as often as I can. Any help you can provide will be very much appreciated. Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle.”

“A-P-P-R-E-S…” Spike struggled to spell.

“’Appreciated’ is spelled with a C, Spike, not an S.”

“I knew that!” he backpedaled. “Aaaaaaand done!”

Twilight looked the parchment over. “Looks good. Send it immediately.”

“Gotcha,” he responded, rolling up the parchment. He held it out and breathed green flame on it. In a flash, it disappeared.

_“Uh… Twilight Sparkle, he just burned your letter,”_ Sissel pointed out, clearly confused.

“Oh, right, you wouldn’t know that,” Twilight began to reply.

“I wouldn’t know what?” Spike asked.

“Not you, Spike, Sissel.”

“Talking to a ghost only you can hear,” he commented mostly to himself. “ _That’s_ not going to get confusing quickly.”

_“I like this guy’s moxie,”_ Sissel commented, wearing a smirk only he could see.

“Small objects like that letter can be sent directly to Princess Celestia through Spike’s fire breath.”

_“Really?”_

“Yes.”

_“How does THAT work?”_

“I’m not entirely sure, I think the Princess set it up. But whatever works, right?”

He couldn’t help but smirk again. _“Right. Now, we’re wasting moonlight. If we’re going to talk to Fluttershy, the sooner the better.”_

“Right.”

“I’m never going to get used to this…” Spike muttered.

_“OK. Before we head out though, one last thing.”_

“What is it, Sissel?”

_“Maybe you can call her up, let her know we’re going to be there?”_

“…Call her? How?”

_“…You mean you… don’t have a telephone?”_

“What’s a ‘telephone’?”

_“…”_

“…”

_“…OK. We might have a liiittle problem here.”_

“What’s wrong?”

_“Back home, telephones were things people used to talk to each other over long distances without having to wait for letters to arrive in the mail. They’re everywhere; pretty much every building has at least one phone.”_

“That’s amazing!” she interjected. “There’s some communication spells that work like that, but they’ve never seen widespread use.”

_“Main point is, one of my tricks lets me travel long distances across phone lines, using the wires that connect phones together. On that night, it was my main way of getting around from place to place. However, with Equestria having no phones…”_

“Then… you don’t have a way to get around.”

_“Exactly. Unless we come up with something else, I’m stuck going core to core, **everywhere**.”_

_This situation reminded me of my old friend, the one who taught me about my powers of the dead. Not every ghost had the ability to move along phone lines, and he was unlucky in that regard. He was chasing somebody, and it was made much more difficult by his inability to use the phone to travel quickly._

_Well, Ray… What must have it been like, being you? Tonight, I would find out myself._

Sissel could practically hear the gears in Twilight’s mind turning. “Hmm… We need to get you a core you can possess then… Can’t you possess me? Would that work?”

_“Sorry, no. I can’t possess living creatures.”_

“Well there has to be something that… …Aha! I got it!”

Twilight’s horn flared magenta, and from the door up the stairs a pair of bags connected by a large strap floated down. They each seemed to have a buckle on the lid in the shape of a six-pointed star, like the one in the center of her cutie mark. “Sissel, does _this_ have a core?”

He popped into the Ghost World for a brief moment to look. _“…Yeah, it does, in one of the buckles. What is it?”_

“These are my saddlebags,” she explained as she levitated them onto her back. “Ponies use these to carry things around without having to use magic. You can possess them and I can take you where we have to go, and I won’t get tired from constantly levitating something around all night!”

_“Sounds like a plan,”_ he smiled.

She leaned her left side, with its bag, towards the table. “Hop in!”

The ghost had no problem making that jump from the horsehead to the bags. _“All set!”_

“Spike,” Twilight called to the dragon as she trotted for the door, “I’m heading to Fluttershy’s now. See if you can clean up a little before you go to bed.”

As he passed through the door, he heard Spike groan.

* * *

**[8:38 PM]**

_We passed through a lot of Ponyville on our way to Fluttershy’s. Twilight took the opportunity to show me around a little while we were out._

_Sugarcube Corner looked a lot like a giant cake, but Twilight said it was a bakery where her friend Pinkie Pie lived and worked. While it was still open, Twilight apparently had enough energy from her cider left that she didn’t feel the need to stop. That, or she felt we had spent too much idle time at the library._

_She also showed me Carousel Boutique, a large round building that was apparently a clothing store owned and run by her friend Rarity. I asked what the point was since ponies didn’t seem to wear clothes, and she said they dressed up for special occasions like dances and weddings, along with those that wore clothes because it was their choice. I suppose that made sense to me. I mean, I’ve seen Detective Jowd and the rest of the family dress up in strange clothing one night a year when the weather started getting cold. “Halloween,” I think it was called. People would wear anything. Me, I was content with just my kerchief collar, though I had gotten used to that red suit during the time I thought I was human. I think red suits me._

_After that, we went through the main plaza, past the large and round Town Hall, over a bridge, and down a dirt path through the outskirts of town. It didn’t look at all like I knew my own town’s outskirts; it was too… green and nature-y. It looked more like Temsik Park than it did any outskirt. I wondered for a bit if we were even going the right way, but I must’ve been thinking out loud again because Twilight assured me that she knew where she was going. Her horn was glowing faintly, giving her light to see by; it reminded of some candles Jowd had used one time during a blackout._

_As we got closer, we started to realize something was terribly wrong._

“Huh…”

As they had been mostly quiet since leaving Ponyville proper, Sissel was jolted from his reverie by the sound of Twilight’s voice. _“Something up?”_

“It’s a little hard to see in the dark, but… I think I see smoke over the treeline.”

_“Smoke? Is that out of place?”_

“Yeah. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire after all, that’s just cause and effect, but I don’t know why Fluttershy would start a fire making… that much… smoke…”

_“…Something’s up. I don’t even have my body, and yet I can feel my fur standing on end.”_

Twilight nodded before picking up the pace to a brisk trot, but it soon became a gallop as she started getting more and more worried.

When she turned the corner, she froze in shock and fear. Her jaw dropped and her eyes seemed to turn into pinpricks.

“No…” Her voice was barely a whisper. Then she said it again, louder. “No…!” The next on was on the verge of a shout. “ _No!_ ”

The remains of Fluttershy’s cottage were heavily ablaze. The entire top of the building seemed to have exploded, and rubble was scattered everywhere. Everything on or around the house that could be on fire _was_ on fire; the furniture inside, the plants draped around the walls, the wooden front door, even the bridge across the brook in front and some of the surrounding grass. Although as a ghost he didn’t see as living people did, even Sissel was temporarily stunned by the sheer amount of light there was compared to the surrounding night.

“ ** _Fluttershy!!_** ” Twilight screamed as she ran towards the burning ruin. “ ** _FLUTTERSHY!!_** ”

_“Twilight, be careful!”_ Sissel telepathically shouted. _“Don’t get yourself killed again!”_

She had to stop at the bridge when it suddenly collapsed from structural damage right in front of her. “ ** _Fluttershy!! Where are you?!_** ”

Sissel’s mind was racing. The last time he saw damage on this scale, Yomiel almost killed the junkyard superintendent on that one night by detonating dynamite. Not everything was on fire that time, so somehow he felt this wasn’t dynamite’s doing, though it might have been something similar. He watched as Twilight tried to grab water from the brook with her magic, probably to try and extinguish the fire with it, but the amount of danger and panic she was feeling was causing her to lose focus, resulting in the water only making it a few feet before falling and splattering on the ground, unable to reach its target. All the while the panicked unicorn was crying out for her friend, shouting herself hoarse.

_That was not intentional._

He switched over to the Ghost World and inspected the scene as far as he could. The front door had half burned away, but its core was still there in the doorknob, and he could tell that there were still some cores inside. _“Twilight Sparkle!”_ he called after he returned to the living world. _“Throw me at the door!”_

“ _What?!_ ” she shouted back.

_“Throw the saddlebags at the door! I think I can get inside!”_

“But how will you put out the fire?! There’s nothing in Fluttershy’s that would stop this inferno!”

_“The one way I can: by stopping it from starting in the first place!”_

“But that’d only work if she’s already…! Already…!”

_“I know, but we don’t have many other options! I promise, one way or another, I **will** save her! Now throw the bags!”_

Twilight was silent for a while before grabbing the saddlebags in her telekinesis and flinging them as far as she could towards the front door. They stopped a couple feet short of hitting it, but it was close enough for him to reach out and possess the doorknob.

The inside of the cottage wasn’t much better than outside. Debris was scattered everywhere, twisted remains of burned cages and burning throw pillows, small lengths of wood and what looked like grass green roof shingles, and what seemed to be the remains of tiny wooded walkways and staircases. The walls were heavily burned, but seemed to have originally been brown, with a green wooden floor. A staircase leading up stood in the far left corner, with the remains of a green couch and a broken floor lamp next to it and its body having bookshelves built into it. There were two other passageways, neither having doors, one in the middle of the left wall and the other in the far right corner. The most prominent feature was a stone fireplace and chimney on the near right; although its adornments were trashed like the rest of the decorations in the room, it mostly seemed to have gotten through whatever happened unscathed.

He could see two corpses lying near the middle of the room. Both had their coats burnt off and a few chunks of their limbs were just plain gone. One was much smaller than the other and just barely managed to resemble a rabbit, while the other larger one was definitely that of a pony.

_That has to be her. Fluttershy. I wonder who the rabbit is, though… Could talk to him myself, and I could probably possess either corpse to go to the same time period, but she’s the one I really have to speak to._

The Ghost World, showed that thankfully, despite all the damage, there were still cores around. The closest was in a hook holding a hanging bird perch to a piece of timber that had fallen and was leaning against the wall; that allowed him to move down to the perch itself. He rocked it and, like with the salad spoon earlier, threw it further into the room. From there, he hopped over to an overturned half-burnt paper box that was surrounded by spilled acorns, from which he was just barely able to reach the pony’s dead body.

* * *

It must have been some time since she had died, Sissel figured, as the soul was awake when he arrived, though it was still in the shape of a blue flame. “Oh! Um…” she said ( _Or perhaps thought is the better term._ ) in a gentle voice that seemed to radiate kindness. “Excuse me, Mr. Cat. If it’s not too much of a bother, would you happen to know who I am?”

“Well, I’ll take my best guess,” Sissel replied. “I’d say you’re Fluttershy, and you’re the animal caretaker that lives in this house. That ring any bells?”

“Fluttershy…? Oh… Oh no…”

In his expert non-human fashion opinion, Sissel thought she looked much better _with_ her hair. Her coat was a sunny yellow. Her mane and tail were colored a gentle pink and were much longer than Twilight’s, with a large bang that easily covered a whole side of her face. She had wings like Twilight did, though they were a little smaller, and she lacked a horn, fitting the description of a pegasus. Her cutie mark was of three pink butterflies happily flitting about.

Her turquoise eyes, however, didn’t look happy at all.

“Angel!” she whispered with great duress; were it not for the fact ghost communicated by thought, Sissel thought he otherwise wouldn’t have heard her at all. “He’s… He’s dead…! H-He was trying to save me and…! And he’s…!” She looked to be on the verge of tears.

“W-Whoa, hang on there, calm down,” Sissel said, attempting to reassure her. As part of this effort, he moved up and tried rubbing up against her leg. He did that to try and mark things as his, and it always seemed to make the people he did it to happy.

“Oh, Mr. Cat…” she said quietly, looking down at him, and giving him a gentle hug; more for her benefit than his. “I keep hearing him… His voice right next to me… Sad and confused… But no matter how hard I try, I can’t reach him…”

_Twilight said that Fluttershy could communicate very well with animals,_ he thought. _I suppose that’s true even when she’s dead. Is “Angel” the name of that dead rabbit…?_

“Y-Yes…” she replied. “That’s him… He tried to help me get away… I-I think… It’s all so hard to remember…”

Sissel could see tears pooling in her eyes and running down her face. “Your heart’s really been breaking for him, eh?”

She looked up and gave a little nod.

_Concerned more for her friend than herself… I know a certain friend of mind she’d get along great with._ “Well… what if I told you I could fix all this?”

She stopped sniffling. “You… You can fix this, Mr. Cat…? But… But how…?”

“Don’t you worry,” he replied, smiling cockily. “This cat’s got a few tricks up his sleeve. Ghost tricks, that is. Watch this.”

* * *

**4 Minutes  
** 8:32 pm – Fluttershy’s Cottage  
 **Before** **D** **eath**

Fluttershy gasped in amazement. “My house…! It’s… It’s fixed! And everypony’s alive again! Oh thank you, Mr. Cat! Thank you!”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Sissel replied, slightly taken aback by how Fluttershy interpreted seeing her cottage intact again. “I didn’t fix your house. I took us back in time to four minutes before you died.”

“…Oh.”

“Yeah, and you and Angel both are going to die again in four minutes if we don’t do something. First we’re going to see how it played out before, and then we use what we see to try and change that fate.”

“Have… you had to do this before, Mr. Cat?”

“Yeah. Twilight Sparkle will be able to explain everything. That is, once you’re alive again.”

“Oh, you know Twilight? That’s good.”

“OK, time to set the clock in motion,” he announced. _Judging from the damage from before, though, this is not going to be pretty._

“I’m not sure I can watch myself die like this…” Fluttershy winced.

“Feel free to cover your eyes or something if you want,” Sissel replied. “I’ll watch.”

_Fluttershy swung open the cottage door. “OK everypony,” she said to the animals gathered behind her. “Whoever wants to come inside, come inside.”_

_Almost immediately, a pair of mice rolling a large cheese wheel between them passed her in the house, running across the room and stopping near the couch at the far end, where they leaned their cheese wheel against one of the legs. They each took a little bit out and started nibbling away._

_The pegasus quickly stepped aside to make space in the doorway for the other animals coming in. The quickest in were several small birds, who flew up to the half-caged perches that hung from the ceiling. The next was a white rabbit, followed by a pair of porcupines, three squirrels, and a bear. The rabbit, Angel, went through the open side door into the kitchen. The squirrels scampered up a little stairway near the door which lead to a hole high in the same wall as the kitchen door. The porcupines milled over to a corner near the other door, while the bear curled up and settled down in the middle of the room._

_Seeing that no one else was coming in, Fluttershy closed the door. The weather pony report on the town bulletin board said tonight’s nightly breezes would be a bit on the chilly side, a consequence of leaf drying for the approaching autumn. Angel always stayed inside the cottage with her, but she supposed that was the reason Mr. and Ms. Porcupine and the squirrel family were staying with her tonight._

_She walked over to the bear and petted his head gently. “Don’t worry, Harry,” she told him. “I spoke with Bench Press this afternoon, and your cave will be cleared out by tomorrow.”_

_The bear dozily smiled at that._

_Angel ran back in, carrying a sheet of paper in his teeth, which he showed to Fluttershy._

_“What is it, Angel…? A salad…? Oh right, you haven’t eaten yet, have you? I’ll go and get that ready.” She took the page from the rabbit and headed through the kitchen door._

_On a small catwalk above, sized similarly to the stairs and weaving around the bird cages, two of the three squirrels emerged from an even higher hole in the wall than the one they first vanished into and ran along its length. Between them carrying what looked to be a small folded open-top paper box loaded with acorns. The third one came chasing after them, chattering angrily. The two of the box were forced to slow down on one of the last curves, allowing their pursuer to catch up and stop them when they were over the couch. The third squirrel apparently gave them a good chattering-to, as he lead the two guilty squirrels slowly back the way they came._

_Meanwhile, the porcupines had wandered near the mice and their cheese wheel, looking hungry. The mice were apparently feeling too greedy to share, and so quickly started to roll the cheese wheel away. They were concerned enough with not sharing their cheese, in fact, they didn’t notice the bear in the way, bumping roughly into him. This woke the large creature up enough to give them an annoyed growl. The bear raised a paw and swatted it at them, only to hit the porcupine that was following the mice. Roaring loudly with pain, the bear jumped back, causing the cottage to shake slightly._

_Fluttershy rushed back into the room. “Harry! What happened?” She gave a quick examination and saw that a few porcupine quills were stuck in his front paw. “Quills…? Did you get too close to Mr. Porcupine without asking him again?” she asked tenderly as she removed the quills with her teeth and petting him with a free hoof. “Don’t worry, Harry, this will stop hurting in a bit.”_

_It was just as she was finishing when there was a sudden clatter from the fireplace, causing the pegasus mare to jump a little in alarm. She looked towards the source to find… something bouncing out and landing a few feet away from its point of entry. It looked like a rounded crystal, with a deep purple glow and a surface that seemed not unlike a disco ball with the center of each mirror sticking out a little in the middle like a stud._

_And a burning fuse sticking out of it._

_And two more of its identical friends following it from down the fireplace chute. They even had fuses of similar length… that were similarly getting shorter every second._

_“Oh dear…!” Fluttershy said, slowly backing away from them. She didn’t know what they were, but they weren’t giving her any good feelings, and judging from the reactions of the animals nearby, they weren’t getting any either. She wasn’t much of a shouter, but her voice did get louder for once. “Everypony, get out, quickly!”_

_That was all the prompting they needed before running for the door, any open windows, any way out of the house. Harry was the first to the front door, only to get himself stuck, blocking the doorway. The birds flew for the windows. The squirrels and the mice took the paths on the walls out, so preoccupied they even left their food behind, the box of acorns falling and spilling on the floor. The porcupines had fled into the door they were near earlier, only to hurry back several seconds later, having found the bathroom to be a dead end, and exit through the kitchen door._

_Fluttershy, however, did not leave, given that there was a bear stuck in the door. She could’ve run for the kitchen door out, but she didn’t want to risk her friend with whatever those crystals were doing. She pushed as hard as she could against his rump, the back of her mind wondering why he was getting stuck **now** when he got in just fine. “Suck it in, Harry!” she shouted. “C’mon, you can do it!”_

_It was then that a question hit her: where was Angel?_

_Then she saw him. He was by the door to the kitchen and was gesturing frantically for her to come with him. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the flames on the fuses begin to disappear into the crystals. “Angel!” she cried, starting to run towards him-_

_BOOOOOM! There was a brilliant flash of light and a massive roar. Her body, suddenly aflame, was thrown against the bear’s rear, where it bounced off and landed in the center of the room, dislodging the large ursine from the doorway in the process. She faintly heard a soft pat as the corpse of a rabbit landed next to her. She could feel her coat burn right off her skin before all feeling disappeared completely._

_Then, as if to add insult to injury, in her last barely aware moments, the ceiling caved in._

“Th-Those were bombs…!” Sissel could barely get the words out. “This… This is just cruel!”

“Oh no…” Fluttershy cried. “He’s dead again…!”

“C-Calm down!” Sissel attempted to assure her; he just met her, and she was already tugging at his heartstrings. “We can still fix this. Remember, I can still rewind time back to the beginning of these four minutes as often as I need to.”

“We have to save him, Mr. Cat!” she pleaded. “There has to be something we can do! There just _has_ to!”

“I know there is, Fluttershy,” he answered. “We’ll save him and you both.” _There’s no doubt that these two killings are attempts by the same organization. The weapons are both magical exploding crystals, illegal in most of Equestria, and on the same night… It can’t be a coincidence. Though I’ll have time to connect those dots with Twilight Sparkle later. Right now, I got a young lady and her pet to save._

* * *

**[Trick Time!]**

The first step was natural; as the cheese wheel rolled by the mice passed by the point where Fluttershy’s corpse was in the future, Sissel moved over to it, and then to one of the throw pillows on the couch once the wheel reached its destination.

_“OK… So you die when the bombs blew up the house right there in the open,”_ he went over with Fluttershy’s ghost. _“When I first came here, I saw the chimney and fireplace weren’t damaged at all. If we keep the bombs from leaving the chimney, it should be able to cushion the blow enough that no one gets hurt.”_

_“OK, if you think that’s the best option…”_ she replied.

_How to get to the fireplace, though?_ he wondered. _This may be a “throw pillow,” but I can’t do any tricks with it, much less throw it._

The next object to catch his attention was the lamp, so he hopped into it. Aside from the fireplace, it was the only source of light in the room; he toyed with the idea of turning it off until he figured it wouldn’t help. _Looks like the best place I can get to the upper areas from, though._

An idea was forming, but he’d have to wait a bit. He watched as the bear laid down and Fluttershy moved to pet him.

_“…OK, I’m honestly curious,”_ he inquired. _“You have a bear. In your house.”_

_“His name is Harry,”_ Fluttershy replied. _“The entrance to his cave fell in a few days ago, so he’s been sleeping over.”_

_“I’m a city cat,”_ he responded. _“If it weren’t for Kamila telling me about her time at the zoo, I wouldn’t know what a bear **is** , but I’m pretty sure they live out in the wild…?”_

_“Well, his cave is a while away by hoof,”_ she explained. _“Every day, I bring him berries to eat.”_

_Almost like a pet bear…_ he thought. _Are all animals in Equestria treated like this…?_

He didn’t have to wait much longer as the squirrels brought along their box of acorns. A look in the Ghost World confirmed his hopes; the box had a core just like it did before ( _For certain definitions of “before.”_ ).

_“Oh, naughty them!”_ Fluttershy commented.

_“Huh?”_ Sissel asked, wondering what she meant.

_“That box is used to help the squirrels move the acorns up into their homes in the trees. Looks like they cut all the strings it’s supposed to have.”_

_“The squirrels need ponies with boxes to help move acorns up trees?”_

_“Well, pegasi like me can fly them up. The boxes are for ponies who can’t fly.”_

_The more I hear about how animals live here in Equestria, the more weirded out I get..._

_“Why, what’s so weird about it?”_ Fluttershy asked.

_“Um…”_ Sissel thought quickly, put on the spot like this. _“I’ll explain later.”_

He refocused himself as the squirrels and their box moved over the couch. From the lamp, he found that, yes, he could reach the box from here, and from there stretched out to try and grab onto the nearest of the hanging bird perches. To his pleasant surprise, it was just within his reach. Remembering this trick from his way in, he started swinging the perch back and forth. The birds scattered and flitted about as their roost was disturbed, eventually finding other places to stand around the room. Sissel resisted the urge to try and pounce them as he eventually swung the perch off the hook, where it landed with a soft thud onto the back of the sleeping bear below.

_“Um, it’s very nice of you to give Harry something, Mr. Cat,”_ Fluttershy commented, _“but I think the birds were, uh, still using it, and I think he may prefer a pillow, if you don’t mind me saying.”_

_“Not a problem,”_ he replied. _“If I’m right, **we’ll** be the ones getting the most use out of it. Just watch.”_

The cheese wheel bumped into Harry at that point. The big bear growled softly before raising his paw attempting to swat at the mice, only to hit the porcupine. He roared as he reared up… and flung the perch across the room and onto the fireplace mantle.

_“Bullseye!”_ Sissel declared, seeing the core for the fireplace’s grill right next to him.

A simple trick pushed the grate in, closing up the fireplace above the main hearth. A couple seconds later, there was a soft clatter as the three crystal bombs landed on it, bouncing lightly; despite their potency, it was clear they weren’t very dense.

_“Perfect!”_ Sissel declared. _“That should do it!”_

_“Um… Mr. Cat?”_ Fluttershy spoke up.

_“Yeah?”_

_“I, uh… I know you probably know what you’re doing, but… if the bombs are stuck in the chimney, then I don’t see them immediately and… there’s maybe slightly **less** warning than there was before…?”_

_“…”_

_“…”_

Sissel’s eyes widened. _“…Uh oh.”_

**[Time Till Death: _3_ ]**

_“I’m sorry,”_ she started immediately apologizing. _“I’m probably just overthinking it-”_

_“No, you’re absolutely right!”_ he shouted back in reply. _“The bombs didn’t make enough noise for you to notice them when they hit the grill! You don’t know they’re there!”_

_“But then how are we going to get everypony out?”_

Sissel quickly scanned the room again, trying to find something they could set off that would give Fluttershy and the animal’s another reason to leave the house, but couldn’t find anything. _“…Blast, I have no idea! This room doesn’t even have a fire alarm! Even if there was, there’s no cores anywhere near here except the perch’s!”_

_“Uh…”_ Fluttershy’s voice had risen an octave or two. _“Speaking of blasts…”_ The fuses on the bombs were quickly getting shorter.

**[Time Till Death: _2_ ]**

Meanwhile, the four-minutes-before Fluttershy turned her head, looking around. “Where’s that hissing noise coming from…? I thought Mr. and Mrs. Snake wanted to stay at their den tonight…”

One of the mice on the floor squeaked as it heard Fluttershy’s wonderings. Following its higher sense of hearing, it trailed the sound of hissing to the fireplace… and upon seeing what was there, promptly turned tail and ran, squeaking loudly.

“ _What_ was there?” Fluttershy replied as she hurried over to check herself. She looked up at the closed opening of the fireplace and her eyes immediately went wide. “Oh dear…! Everypony, get out, quickly!”

**[Time Till Death: _1_ ]**

The evacuation went along much as it did the first time. Harry got stuck in the door, the squirrels and mice dropped their food and escaped, and the porcupines took their wrong turn and double-backed. Fluttershy struggled to help the bear through the door. Even though the bombs weren’t out in the open, Sissel dimly reflected that keeping the bombs in the chimney didn’t seem to change Fluttershy’s fate at all. There was still a chance that the explosion would be adequately contained by the stone chimney, but he was feeling like he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere.

**[Time Till Death: _0_ ]**

As the fuses started to vanish into the crystals, he decided he didn’t want his soul in anything that was going to be immediately destroyed and hopped back to the perch.

Fluttershy looked around and spotted Angel in the doorway, gesturing for her to come with him. “Angel!” she shouted as she ran for him-

BOOOOOM! A massive burst of flame emerged from the fireplace as the three bombs detonated… and slammed Fluttershy into the opposite wall.

Angel panicked and scattered, and Sissel swore the portions he heard of Fluttershy’s dying scream would be burned into his mind for eternity.

**[Time’s Up]**

He stopped time on instinct. The world turned grey as it froze instead of the Ghost World’s usual red. He was familiar with this sort of scene, and he didn’t like it one bit, since it was very clear what it meant.

Fluttershy was breathing so rapidly from shock she’d probably die from hyperventilation if she wasn’t already dead. The hairs of her coat were on end in a way that reminded Sissel very much of himself. Her eyes were so bugged out he almost thought they’d fall out, and were emitting a veritable river of tears. The squeals of pain and sorrow she was emitting were ripping his heart apart.

The only thing the cat could bring himself to say was, “…That wasn’t it.”

He spent what felt like hours (it was hard to tell exactly how long, since time had stopped flowing) comforting and reassuring her that he could rewind back to the beginning and things could still be fixed, and calming her down before getting to the topic of their next attempt.

“Stopping the bombs in the chimney doesn’t work then…” he thought out loud. “So the only way to save you would be to keep the bombs from being dropped down the chimney in the first place.”

“So we’d have to get on the roof,” Fluttershy replied. “But… that would mean having to get up through the second floor.”

“A second floor? This cottage has a second floor?”

“It’s not very big, Mr. Cat; it just has my bedroom. …I think. That came back to me, but not much else, sorry…”

Sissel recalled the stairs in the room he had spent the last four minutes moving around in. “So if the bedroom’s on the second floor, what’s on the first floor?”

“Um…” She seemed confused. “The… living room…? Where we are now…?”

“…Ah, I see,” he replied. _First non-alcoholic cider, then first floors being second floors… I’m sensing a pattern here. Probably be for the best if I just rolled with it._ “We could stop the bombs on that floor… No, you wouldn’t be able to hear them hit the grill _or_ their fuses, and they’d probably take the ceiling of the ground floor off in the process, which would likely kill you when the entire floor above came down. So we still need to stop the bombs from going down the chimney; even if they get lit, if they’re on the roof, only the fir- second floor should be destroyed and everyone should live.”

“You really think it’d be OK for them to go off there? Those bombs destroyed most of the cottage, so why wouldn’t…?”

“The debris scattered around when you first died included what looked like roof tiles and pieces of decoration I didn’t see in the main room, which shows the ceiling and some of the second floor weren’t burned away or blown up; they collapsed down when the bombs detonated on the ground floor and weakened the walls. It’s probably a bit of a long shot, but at the roof or higher, there’s a better chance of everyone surviving than right now. It’s our best lead.”

Fluttershy nodded, though it wasn’t long before she voiced another concern. “Not that I want to doubt, but… are you sure we still have a chance, Mr. Cat?”

“There’s still a chance as long as I don’t give up,” he answered, steeling a look in his eyes. “And I am a very stubborn cat.”

* * *

**[Trick Time!]**

After rewinding to the beginning of the four minutes and moving from the cheese wheel to the throw pillow, Sissel took a moment to take another look around, this time stretching his perception as a ghost outside the boundaries of the room. It took longer than he wanted, but eventually he managed to see outside the cottage to the grounds around it… and a particular something parked just across the little bridge.

_“That cart…!”_

_“What cart?”_ Fluttershy asked. _“That carpentry cart? If, y’know, you don’t mind me asking…”_

_“The same ponies **are** responsible!”_ Sissel declared.

_“I’m sorry, Mr. Cat, I don’t quite follow…”_

_“I’ll explain later. Right now, let’s get up to the roof. We have to get up there before the bombs go down the chimney, so we have even less time than before.”_

Sissel figured out how to do that easily enough. When the squirrels came to above the couch, he hopped right for the box and the hanging perch. From there, he moved up to the hook it was hanging from and looked up just above him.

A core on the floor above. Perfect. He possessed it, moving up into Fluttershy’s bedroom.

He found himself possessing some form of pony-shaped plush toy inside a wooden chest that stood at the foot of a small bed, which was covered with a checkered-butterfly patterned quilt and white sheets. Instead of straight-out brown, the walls were a homely tan, though the floor remained as green as the ground level. On either side of the head of the bed stood a small bookcase with books and various other knick-knacks and a side table with a pitcher standing on it. Hanging from the wall above the bed were two hanging scrolls, one of a grassy meadow with a rainbow and the other of the sun on a purple sky. In the expected place from the ground floor stood a fireplace, currently empty of even firewood. In the rafters above, several birds nests had been built, some small vines hung, and a few birdhouses were strung up. In the corner, the staircase from the floor below emerged.

After gaining his bearings, Sissel decided to check on the top of the chimney and focused his perspective upwards, past the roof. _It’s time we got a good look at our killer._

The roof itself was a large moss-covered dome that gave the whole cottage the impression of being carved out of a hill. The most noticeable feature was the tall chimney, which extended high enough above the roof proper that two more birdhouses could fit onto the sides. _Well, by “most noticeable,” I’m pretty sure I mean “the only things up there.” Not a lot to work with._

Though the thing that drew the most attention was the mare with light grey fur that was just now finishing her climb onto the roof. She wore a very familiar black hat and vest and had sharp violet eyes. Her darker grey mane was styled into curls, and like the assassin before here, she had no cutie mark. In her teeth, she was carrying a black suitcase that was too large to be practical for these sorts of stunts.

Gaining her footing, she laid the suitcase down beside her. “Whew, finally!” she exclaimed in a hushed voice as she wiped her brow; while it was softer than the other assassin’s voice, it still held an obvious bitter edge to it. “Took forever to find someplace around back to climb up- whoa no you don’t!”

The case had started to slide off the edge of the roof. Quick as a wink, she grabbed onto the handle with her teeth again and pushed it towards the center of the roof, where it balanced on the tip of the dome.

“You’re not running off on me, little guys,” she said to the suitcase. “When you go down, it’ll be down the chimney, just as His Majesty ordered! Got it!”

_“Looks like we found our crystal bomber,”_ Sissel commented.

_“She’s the one trying to kill me…?”_ Fluttershy wondered. _“But why…? I’m just an animal caretaker… And who’s ‘ **His** Majesty?’ Equestria is ruled by princesses…”_

_“First things first, we have to stop her from getting those bombs down the chimney.”_ Re-entering the Ghost World, Sissel noticed something strange. _“…Huh,”_ he commented. _“The grills for this first floor fireplace don’t seem to be here.”_

_“That’s odd…”_ Fluttershy wondered. _“I wonder where they went…”_

_“You don’t know?”_

_“I don’t think it’s so much ‘I don’t know’ as much as it’s ‘I don’t remember’… I want to say they’re getting repaired, but I’m not sure…”_

_Also means even if we wanted to stop the bombs on this floor, we couldn’t,_ he thought. _Probably why they got down there the first time._

Feeling the time crunch, Sissel didn’t waste a second. From the toy, he went to the chest then to the bedsheets, which he then pulled up to the pillow. Then to the larger hanging scroll, which he then rolled up. It quickly fell back down again, so he tried again and hopped to the nearest birdhouse when he was at the highest point. He set it swinging and got to another birdhouse, the one that hung closest to the ceiling. From there, he managed to reach out through the roof itself and cling to the bomber’s suitcase.

The bomber undid the clasps on the case and opened it up. Nestled in foam padding were the three spherical purple crystals. “I don’t know why His Majesty picked me for this job instead of a pegasus,” she thought out loud. “But oh, I should count my blessings. _He’s_ bound to notice me after I do this job so cleanly~ And then he’ll say, ‘Your bombs set not only the target aflame, but also my heart~ Come, my dear, let us dine together on the blood of the unworthy~’ Oh, my sweet dark grey Grenadier, he’d scoop me up in his arms and-~” Her romantic musings were halted as she found herself starting to lose balance from her gestures. It only took a moment to regain them. “Silly Bossa Boom, getting yourself carried away again. I’ll have plenty of time to think about him after she’s dead~”

_“Quirky hitmen,”_ Sissel mused. _“Finally, something this world and mine have in common.”_

_“It’s very nice that she has a very special somepony,”_ Fluttershy commented, _“but, um, I’d rather her idea of romance not involve killing me.”_

The bomber, apparently named Bossa Boom, scooped up the three bombs from the case and nested them in her left arm before looking up at the top of Fluttershy’s chimney. “Hmm, don’t think I can reach that high…” She looked at the case and got an idea, flipping it closed and giving it a light push. It slid easily across the mossy roof; on instinct, Sissel influenced it into turning around so the joint on the bottom was facing away from the chimney when it came to rest against it.

_“So, uh, if you don’t mind me saying,”_ Fluttershy propositioned, _“this is where we move to the birdhouses, right…?”_

The ghost cat gave the situation a quick review. _“…Actually, I think I’ve got a better idea.”_

Giving her hooves one last rub-together, Bossa Boom three-legged walked across the roof and got on top of the suitcase, which due to its initial contents had an understandably solid hide. The plan was to use the suitcase and birdhouses as stepping stones to reach the top of the chimney, where she would then light the bombs and drop them.

Or at least it was, until the suitcase flung itself open while she was standing on it.

“Ahh!” she shouted in alarm as she was thrown onto her back, tossing her cargo in the air. She regained her bearings almost ridiculously quick as she noticed the crystals were peaking their arc and starting to fall over the site of the cottage. “No!” she cried, quickly getting on her hooves and making a mad dive for them. She went over the edge of the roof as she leapt for them, and just barely managed to hold on to the edge while clinging to the bombs with her other hoof. After several moments to make sure she wouldn’t fall back to the ground, she heaved a sigh of relief.

Sissel needed a moment to tear his sight away from that feat of dexterity before focusing down on the ground floor. He couldn’t hear down that far, but he did see Fluttershy finish tending to Harry and return back through the door, Angel following her this time. _“Looks like we managed to change your fate and give you some more time.”_

_“Yay!”_ Fluttershy cheered much quieter than he expected. _“That means Angel and I are saved, right? I mean, if it’s OK for me to ask…”_

_“Not yet. The bomber’s still here, those bombs are still ready to blow once they’re lit, and I doubt she’s going to fall for that trick again. We need to think of something else, and quick.”_

**[Fate Changed!]**

Since she only had one hoof available to her, Bossa Boom faced a difficult challenge in getting back on the roof, but not one that Sissel would think she’d fail to overcome for too long. Closing the suitcase, he quickly checked out the cores of the two birdhouses on the chimney. Like with the ones on the floor below, he found he could rock these, but they were fairly well-secured to the stone and only jittered back and forth for a bit. Would probably make her lose her balance if she was stepping on it, but given what she just did, she’d regain it quickly.

Two birdhouses to rock and a suitcase to open and close. _I don’t know if I’m just losing my memory again, but I don’t remember a time I had so little to work with._

_“Don’t give up, Mr. Cat…!”_ Fluttershy silently cheered. _“You can do it…! As long as you don’t give up, there’s still a chance…! That’s what you said…!”_

_…That I did. I’ve got a promise to keep. There’s a solution here, I just have to think of it._

Groaning loudly from strain, Bossa Boom pulled herself back up onto the roof. “No one told me that suitcase was spring-loaded…” she angrily thought aloud. “My sweetheart better treat me to candlelight dinner at the fanciest restaurant in Equestria for all I’m going through…!”

Sissel, meanwhile, was still thinking hard. _Shaking the birdhouses will only cause her to stumble a bit if I rock it while she’s standing on it… If all I can do is stumble her up… then I have to do that stumbling at the worst possible moment for her._

Carrying the bombs with her, the bomber practically stomped up to the suitcase, almost slipping once on the moss, and turned it around so the clasps were facing outward. “There. That should teach you, you naughty thing.” She got on top of it and continued with her initial plan, climbing up the side of the chimney by using the birdhouses as footholds.

_“I’m surprised these flimsy things aren’t giving under her weight,”_ Sissel noted as he sat waiting in the topmost birdhouse.

_“Y-You think they’re flimsy…?”_ Fluttershy squeaked. _“But I used the strongest wood I could find making them…”_

_“I-I’m sure they’re perfectly strong…”_ Sissel backpedaled. _She made these herself? Not surprising, except… how could she use tools like that without hands?_

Fluttershy apparently didn’t have an answer to that, as he got no response. He waited to pounce as Bossa Boom completed her ascension and stood, her rear hooves on either side of the birdhouse he was occupying, where she could easily look down the chimney.

“Now where did…?” she asked herself as she dug her snout into the inside of her vest. A moment later, she pulled it out to reveal a match she was holding in her teeth. She struck it against the top of the chimney, setting it alight, and ran it across the tips of each crystal bomb’s fuse before spitting it down the flue. “Here’s to king, country, and love, sister,” she said to apparently her target as she held the bombs above the chimney. “Shame you can’t be part of any of it~”

_“Now!”_ Sissel shouted as he shook the birdhouse as hard as he could.

“Whoa-oa!” the bomber shouted as her foothold rapidly shifted. She tilted sharply backwards for a moment; she managed to catch herself in time to keep from falling, but in the process accidently tossed all three bombs backwards. They bounced gently on the roof and rolled to a stop against the side of the suitcase opposite the chimney, the little trip doing nothing to smother their fuses.

Sweating a little, Bossa Boom quickly made her way back down and scooped up the bombs again. “What happened there…?” The constant shortening of the fuses refocused her attention very quickly. “I’ll think about it when I’m making my report,” she affirmed before starting her trek up again, and once again, stood on the top birdhouse, this time checking and double-checking her position to make sure she had the right balance.

_“Oh no you don’t, you naughty thing,”_ Sissel teased as he rocked the birdhouse again.

“Whoa whoa…!” Bossa Boom emitted as she struggled for her balance. She didn’t fall backwards or drop the bombs, but she did drop one hoof down to the birdhouse below. “I-I can still make the drop from here!” she reassured herself, nervously glancing at the metaphorically-ticking bombs.

Then the suitcase flew open again and struck her in the back of that lower leg.

“GAH!” she yelped, flinging the bombs back again in reflex to hold her wound. Like before, the bombs hit the roof and rolled to rest against the suitcase.

After giving her leg a quick rub, Bossa Boom looked again at the bombs… and their stubby fuses. “U-Uh… close enough!” she declared, jumping down to the roof’s surface. She probably intended to run to the edge, but the slope and slippery moss made her trip and fall off instead, landing in some thick and rough-looking shrubbery. It would be several moments before she could untangle herself and run for the carpentry cart.

Meanwhile, on the roof, Sissel closed the suitcase’s lid again, which put the carrier’s core right next to the violent violet crystals. Fluttershy’s nervousness was palpable.

_“M-Mr. Cat, we’re… we’re right next to…!”_

_“I know,”_ he replied. _I don’t like it much either, but those nice birdhouses are going to be shredded wood once those bombs blow. This looks tough enough to take the blow, though I’m just clinging to hope here…_

Down on the ground floor, Fluttershy had reentered the main room carrying a salad on a plate in her teeth and set it down in the middle of the clear patch near the door. Angel hopped up to it and gave it a quick examination before taking a lettuce leaf and chewing on it. The pegasus then heard a sound of something large falling into the bushes outside. “Wh-What was that?” she asked, almost immediately on edge. The animals except Harry all looked up, but made no further action.

Sissel watched as the fuses disappeared into the crystals for the third time tonight. _“Brace yourself!”_ he shouted to Fluttershy.

BOOOOOM! With a bright flash and the sound of rushing fire, the crystals exploded. The roof and most of the upper half of the second floor were blown to smithereens immediately, and several objects caught on fire or were otherwise blown apart. The suitcase itself suffered massive damage, destroying most of its casing, but the metal frame remained intact. The force of the explosion pushed the suitcase against the chimney, which suffered heavy cracks but otherwise remained standing, and then once that force ran out, it slid down the near-sheer sloped and bounced off the fireplace mantle, landing with a clatter amidst the rubble that accumulated on the floor.

The explosion had also caused the whole cottage to violently shake. Fluttershy freaked at the combined quaking and loud noise, and immediately dived for cover under the couch faster than anyone would’ve imagined possible. All of the other small animals ran for other cover. The birds fled out the windows; the squirrels ran back into the hole in the wall from whence they came, dropping their box of acorns in their wake; and Angel and the porcupines joined Fluttershy under the sofa. Harry was woken up by the sound and, grumpy at being awakened from his sleep, roared loudly at the ceiling.

Sissel released a breath he didn’t know he was holding. He was still alive.

…OK, he was dead, but he still existed. That was the idea. He would live to- no, wait… Ah, forget it.

_“Oh thank the gods…”_ he said, relief filling his voice. _“We survived that….”_

_“T-Th-That was way too close…”_ Fluttershy stuttered, her nerves all on end.

_“But we made it, let’s be glad for that… And better than that, the bombs went off, the bomber fled, and everyone’s still alive.”_

_“D-Does that mean…?”_

He smiled. _“Yeah. Your and Angel’s deaths have been erased, for good this time.”_

**[Fate Averted!]**

As he stopped time to prepare for the trip to the new “present,” Sissel noticed Fluttershy was, like her four-minutes-before self, cowering with her head covered up. “Something wrong?” he asked.

She peeked out from beneath her hooves. “I-I’m alright…” she whispered. “It was just _really_ scary back there…”

“Can’t blame you for that. Believe me, I wouldn’t want to be caught next to a bomb going off either.”

“…” Slowly but steadily, helped by Sissel rubbing up against her again, Fluttershy got back to her feet. “…Mr. Cat, before we go back to the present, can… can I ask you something? I mean, if that’s OK…”

“Sure. What is it?”

“Right before we went back in time… which is very nice, by the way… you said something about ‘ghost tricks’…?”

“Yes, my powers of the dead. They allow me to possess and manipulate objects, and go back in time by possessing someone’s corpse.”

“Powers of the dead…? So that means… _you’re_ a ghost too…?”

“Well, you’re not a ghost anymore, or at least you won’t be when we head back, but yes, I’m a ghost.”

“But then… how did you die…?”

“…” Many silent moments passed. Sissel couldn’t help but avert his glance.

“I-It’s OK if you don’t want to answer, sorry I offended you-” Fluttershy hastily apologized.

“No, it’s not that. I’m not offended. Just… it’s a really long story, and I’ve got other things on my mind.”

“OK… If it makes you feel better, you can tell me another time, alright…?”

“Sure, thanks. By the way, my name’s not Mr. Cat. It’s Sissel.”

“Sissel…? That’s a nice name. Seems more suited for a girl cat, though… I mean, not that it’s not alright for you!” she backpedaled.

Sissel gave her another rub and purr to let her know she was forgiven. “It’s fine. Now, let’s get you back to your alive-again rabbit friend, shall we?”

She nodded.

* * *

_As we traveled back to the new “present” that awaited us, thoughts about what I had learned during the last four minutes filled my mind._

_It wasn’t a lone assassin that tried to kill Twilight Sparkle. He was a member of a group of assassins. What was a group of assassins called anyway? A murder, maybe? Just for the joke? Back on topic, they were led by someone they treated as royalty, someone male. He had given the two of them their assignments of killing Twilight and Fluttershy._

_Fluttershy…_

_“She’s the one trying to kill me…? But why…? I’m just an animal caretaker…”_

_That was a good question, actually. Why target Fluttershy? Because she was a friend of Twilight Sparkle? If that was the case, that would mean her other four friends would be in their sights tonight._

_And could this all be connected to the margrave oaks and where my body is…?_

_If I knew assassination groups, they wouldn’t make a move like this if they didn’t want it finished quickly. By dawn, I felt that if I did nothing, they would accomplish what they set out to do and erase any evidence they could get their hands… paws… hooves on. Except for the line of dead bodies in their wake._

_It would seem then I would have another story that lasted one night only…_


	3. 8:39 PM

_The dark grey assassin and the light grey bomber… Who were these ponies, and who did they work for?_

_Motive was an interesting puzzle. Twilight Sparkle had mentioned offhand earlier that she was a princess, presumably like Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. Given that, it was easy to assume the attack on her was some sort of royal assassination attempt. However, they then tried to kill Fluttershy, who supposedly wasn’t royalty at all. Was it simply friendship that tied this librarian and this caretaker together? Or was there some other factor I wasn’t aware of?_

_And how did it all connect with where my body was?_

_Regardless, I knew my next move. I had to share these developments with Twilight Sparkle as soon as possible._

“Fluttershy!” Twilight cried out as she ran in through the open cottage door. “Fluttershy, are you alright?! I saw the smoke and your roof blown up and…” Her speech petering off, she looked around in panic. The main room of the cottage seemed mostly unscathed, aside from a lot of fallen dust covering the floor and the central rug being a little curled up on the side facing the front door. That’s when she picked up movement coming from under the couch across the room. She walked cautiously over to it and peeked underneath. “Fluttershy…?”

Huddled in a ball half-hidden behind her pink mane was the mare in question, shaking harder than her cottage was a minute ago. With her were Angel, a few squirrels, some mice, and two porcupines, all in the process of trying to calm her down.

“Fluttershy!” Twilight declared, relief filling her voice. “Oh, thank Celestia you’re alright!”

“T-Twilight…?” Fluttershy’s voice squeaked. Twilight only heard it through the unnatural quiet that seemed to fill the room with tension. One eye peeked out from behind her bangs. “I… I’m not entirely sure I’m alright…”

“Not entirely… What do you mean?”

Fluttershy said nothing, just bowed her head a little more.

It took several minutes – more than Twilight felt comfortable sparing considering the urgency of her investigation, but ones the pegasus needed more than she did – to get Fluttershy out from under the couch and calmed down enough to the point she could talk. The animals dusted the couch off so they could sit on it together, Twilight’s saddlebags leading against one of the legs.

“Feeling better yet?” Twilight asked.

“A… A little…” Fluttershy replied. “I-I think I’m ready to talk now…”

“OK, but let me know if it starts feeling like too much. What happened?”

“I-I don’t think you’ll believe me…”

“I’ll believe you, Fluttershy. Just, please, answer the question.”

“I… I’m not entirely sure… It’s a little hard to sort out in my memories, but… I think I… may have died…”

“You _died_?” Twilight’s voice was filled with shock.

“Oh, I knew you wouldn’t believe me-”

“No, it’s not that! You died. OK. What happened after that?”

“A-After that…?”

“Yes, after you died. Try to remember, please.”

“After I died…” Fluttershy muttered as she thought hard. “After I died, I… I heard Angel…” She hugged the rabbit closer to her. “He was dead, too…”

“Angel died too?”

She nodded. The rabbit himself was slightly grumpy at being in something as embarrassing as a hug, satisfied at helping his mistress, and confused about what she was talking about.

“Yes… and then there… there was a cat…”

Something seemed to dawn on Twilight. “A cat?” she pressed.

“Yes, a black cat…”

“With a red kerchief tied around his neck?” She gestured the area around her neck with a hoof.

Fluttershy looked up. “How did-?”

Before she could finish her question or Twilight could answer it, they heard a creaking sound. They looked towards the source to see one of the bird perches on the ceiling, the one closer to the front door, swinging on its hook. After a few swings, it swung off the hook and landed on the carpet.

Twilight stood up and walked over to it. “Sissel?” she asked the perch. “Is that you?”

* * *

After returning to the present, Sissel looked below the suitcase and saw, to his delight, the core for one of the bird perch hooks right below him. From there, getting down to the perch itself, and from there down to the cottage floor, was so simple as to require no explanation.

He reached out to Twilight after she finished her approach, starting a connection of communication between them within the timelessness of the Ghost World. Nearby, he could see Fluttershy, now possessing her own lingering core. “Glad to see you didn’t forget me,” he jokingly greeted her.

“I thought you were in my saddlebags,” she replied, confused. “I don’t think they went anywhere near enough to that perch for you to reach it… How’d you get up there?”

“Well I didn’t start up there, if that’s what you’re wondering,” he replied.

He wanted to continue, but Fluttershy spoke up. “Oh, Mr. Cat! I mean, Sissel. Sorry…”

“It’s alright,” he answered.

“I just remembered something,” she continued. “I forgot to thank you for saving Angel’s life.” She smiled warmly, hot enough that Sissel could feel his heart melt. “So, thank you! I’m sure if Angel could talk to you, he’d thank you too.”

“So you _did_ save Angel and Fluttershy’s lives,” Twilight addressed the cat. “What happened?”

_Information in the Ghost World moves at the speed of thought. Thanks to that, it was quick and easy for both Fluttershy and myself to tell Twilight about the four minutes of the past we experienced together. It was as simple as sharing our memories of the event._

“Crystal _bombs_?” Twilight thought out loud ( _Even though in the Ghost World, all thinking is out loud._ ). “First crystal grenades, and now crystal bombs…?”

“Grenades…?” Fluttershy inquired. “Twilight, if you don’t mind me asking, what are you talking about?”

_Another quick explanation, as Twilight and I caught Fluttershy up on the events of the night and how we had come to meet._

“Y-You died too?!” Fluttershy uttered in shock. Despite the attention of a shout, it somehow came out quieter than her normal speaking voice, not that they missed any of it thanks to the nature of the Ghost World.

“Yes,” Twilight answered. “Just like you, I was killed in my own home by an assassin with a crystal weapon, and Sissel rewound time and averted my fate.”

“Oh dear…”

“Well,” Sissel announced. “Now that we’re all caught up and together, I’ve got some questions that need answers.”

“That’s right, we came down here to ask about the Everfree Forest,” Twilight remembered.

“T-The Everfree Forest…?” Fluttershy stuttered, the fear in her voice transparent.

“Not just that,” the cat added. “There’s a few questions that I think Twilight Sparkle may also be able to help with.”

“Me?” Twilight replied. “Well, a good librarian _does_ know how to answer questions.”

Sissel decided to start with an icebreaker of a topic. “First of all, this room is missing something.”

“It is…?” Fluttershy asked.

“When we left the past,” he clarified, “there was a bear in here.”

“A bear?” Twilight wondered in reaction.

“That’s right…” Fluttershy replied. “Harry isn’t here… I’m afraid I don’t know what happened to him, sorry…”

“I think I have an idea,” Twilight chimed in. “He was sleeping on the rug during Fluttershy’s last four minutes, right? Well, look at the carpet now. It’s shifted position and scrunched up a little, like something moved across it quickly. Also, when I got here, the door was wide open and looked a little bent out. I think he got frightened from the explosion like Fluttershy did, and responded by fleeing out the front door.”

“Oh dear, that explosion from above and the dust falling must’ve reminded him of his cave…!” Fluttershy spoke. “The poor thing, he must be so scared…! I have to go find him as soon as I can!”

In the world of the living, Fluttershy got off the couch and started trotting for the door when Twilight stuck an arm in front of her.

“Wait, Fluttershy,” she explained. “You can’t just go out wandering into the night like that, not with your life at risk. If you die again, we won’t know where to find you.”

“But Twilight, it’s cold, and dark, and he doesn’t have a home right now…!” Fluttershy pleaded.

“Harry’s a big bear,” Twilight replied. “He can take care of himself for one night.”

_“That’s something you don’t hear every day,”_ Sissel commented to himself.

“He knows to avoid the Everfree, so he won’t get in trouble. Right now, we need you here, to help us figure out what’s going on.”

Fluttershy was silent for a few moments, thinking it over, before giving Twilight a small nod and stepping back a few paces.

Sissel re-established their connection with the Ghost World. “Next question. Twilight Sparkle, on our way out of the library, I think I heard you mention to Spike that you were a princess, right?”

“You didn’t tell Mr. Sissel you were a princess…?” Fluttershy exclaimed.

“Well I didn’t feel like I had time to tell him _everything_ about us after he saved me,” Twilight explained. “I being a princess was one of the things that got left out.”

_How the idea you’re **royalty** gets “left out” is beyond me…_ Sissel mused.

“Princess Twilight Sparkle was coronated as the Princess of Friendship last month,” Fluttershy proudly informed Sissel.

“Fluttershy, please,” Twilight interjected. “I’ve told you and the others multiple times, I don’t want my friends using my title. I’m still the same pony as I was before I got these wings.”

“We’re getting off topic here,” Sissel rerailed. “As I was saying, since Twilight Sparkle is a princess, I had guessed that was the reason an assassin was sent after her. However, now we know for sure… Fluttershy, you’re not a princess too, right?”

“Oh no, I could never do that,” she replied timidly. “I don’t even know how Twilight does it.”

“And yet you were targeted anyway. We know, or can at least easily infer, from the similar M.O.s that the same organization sent both killers. So there must be some connection between you two that’s important enough to them to off you both. You’re good friends, but there’s something more to it, isn’t there?”

The two ponies shared sideways glances with each other.

“You don’t think…?” Fluttershy asked.

“I think so…” Twilight replied.

_So there is something…!_ Sissel thought.

“Yes,” Twilight answered. “Fluttershy and I are two of the six bearers of the Elements of Harmony. It’s the only other thing major enough that we both have in common.”

“Elements of Harmony?” Sissel asked. “That wasn’t something I was introduced to during my orientation, Twilight Sparkle.”

“And it’s something I probably should’ve talked about, given how important they are,” she replied. “The Elements of Harmony are six very powerful magical gems, each the embodiment of one of ponykind’s virtues of Harmony and Order. Honesty, Loyalty, Laughter, Kindness, Generosity, and Magic. In the hooves of their rightful bearers, they are capable of power that can free Equestria from almost any threat it faces; in our darkest hour, it is the light that brings hope and strength to all ponies.”

_A ray of light in the darkness… It’s funny how many memories of that night are being brought up by this new adventure._ “And you two are some of these ‘bearers’?”

“Yes. I bear the Element of Magic, while Fluttershy bears the Element of Kindness.”

_I can believe that._ “So it’s one element to a pony, it seems. And I think I can guess the other four…”

Twilight nodded. “Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, and Rarity bear Honesty, Loyalty, Laughter, and Generosity respectively. The story of how we all became friends and bearers is very long, and while the night is young, I’d rather not waste any more time than I could.”

“Twilight…” Fear was starting to creep back into Fluttershy’s voice. “If we were attacked because we bear the Elements, then that would mean our friends are in danger too…!”

“My theory exactly,” Sissel replied. “And since you two were attacked tonight, it’s not too much of a stretch to think they’ll attack them tonight as well.”

“Oh no…” Twilight muttered, holding a hoof to her face as if nursing a migraine. “This is bad… We can’t go looking for the margrave oaks now…”

Fluttershy’s fear was tempered off by confusion. “Margrave oaks…? Why would you want to find those?”

“This leads into my last question, actually,” Sissel answered. “Remember that carpentry cart we saw while we were in the past? The one outside your cottage the bomber ran for after we foiled her plan? That cart, or one just like it, is the one I woke up on, if you remember. It had planks made of margrave oak wood on it. We came out here to ask you if you’ve seen any suspicious activity in the Everfree Forest tonight.”

“Sorry, no…” Fluttershy apologized. “I was too busy with the animals all day to pay attention to the forest, and I usually try to ignore it as much as I can…”

“That’s right, the cart _was_ parked outside, wasn’t it…?” Twilight thought out loud.

Time resumed, and Twilight levitated her saddlebags over and put them back into place. Not understanding what she was up to, Sissel quickly possessed them once they were close enough. “Fluttershy, could you come with me? With the whole situation, I think I’d feel more comfortable if I knew you were close.”

“Oh, OK…” she quietly replied as she followed the alicorn out the front door.

From the bags, Sissel watched as Twilight’s horn started glowing with light again and she trotted over the bridge to the dirt road beyond it. On her left, it went the way she came to get here towards Ponyville. On her right, not more than twenty meters away, stood the boundary of the Everfree Forest. Sissel felt a chill as he looked at the trees and the darkness they contained. Even though the pony’s manually-operated way of life was unnatural to him, the Everfree felt even more unnerving, probably about as much as it was to the ponies the first time they encountered it.

_Could my body really be somewhere in there…?_

Twilight lowered her head to the ground, inspecting it closely.

“Um, Twilight…” Fluttershy started to ask. “What are you doing…?”

Twilight raised her head again. “As I thought. I’m no expert, but there are quite clearly tracks for a common wagon and two ponies side by side, most likely drawing it.”

_“Tracks in the dirt,”_ Sissel thought with a small amount of glee. _“Now you’re talking my language. But I didn’t see any tracks outside the library…”_

“Any exposed ground in Ponyville is packed tight by all the ponies that walk over it every day. It’s too tightly packed to leave much of a trail. Out here, however, that’s not the case.”

“But where does it lead…?” Fluttershy asked.

Twilight looked over the markings on the ground again. “This is where the wagon you two saw was for sure, comparing against your memories of it. The tops of the hooves of the ponies are pointing this way…” She looked along the direction the tracks were going in and looked up… only to be greeted by the entrance to the Everfree Forest.

_“As we thought!”_ Sissel declared happily. _“They **did** go into the forest! Let’s go after them!”_

“Not yet,” Twilight replied.

Sissel’s good mood was quickly deflated. _“Why not?! Something about the forest has a clue to where my body is!”_

“Well, for one, there’s no guarantee the ground in the Everfree will be soft enough to hold tracks, and even if there was, I can’t read tracks _that_ well. Two…”

She stopped talking, but Sissel could fill in the blank.

_Two: her friends are very likely in mortal danger._

_And until she’s sure they’re all safe, she’s not going somewhere no pony likes going. I doubt I’ll be able to change her mind on that._

_Sorry, body, you’ll have to wait a little while longer…_

Fluttershy walked up to Twilight’s side. “So, uh… what do we do now…?”

“We need to get back to Ponyville and make sure the others are alright,” the other answered. “Once we’re altogether, _then_ we might consider braving the Everfree.”

_“Got it,”_ Sissel responded, though he other thoughts on the matter. _So this is what it’s going to take to find my body, eh? Make sure Twilight Sparkle and her friends all survive this night? I can do that. I may be a black cat, but I’m pretty sure I’m good luck. Not that I don’t see why I’m not good luck… A trip back to Ponyville might be nice anyway, allow me to look into a certain assassin-shaped lead… Though…_

He found himself saying, or perhaps thinking, the next part out loud.

_“I really wish there were telephones.”_

“Telephones…?” Fluttershy asked.

“Something he told me about earlier,” Twilight replied. “There’re some sort of device that ponies use to talk to each other over long distances without letters or possibly even magic. He’s able to move between them.”

“You could talk to anypony without having to leave your own home? That’s amazing.”

_“Well not ‘anypony,’”_ Sissel clarified. _“You have to have their telephone number.”_

“Telephone number?” Twilight asked.

_“I assume it’s how they tell each other apart,”_ he answered. _“You dial the number into the telephone, and it connects with another phone depending on the number. And I can move across that connection.”_

“I see,” Twilight mused. “A unique identification number for each device.”

_“Well, more like each **place** has one.”_

“That could probably be even more efficient. I should be writing this all down! The Department of Communications up in Canterlot would love to hear about this!”

“Uh, Twilight…” Fluttershy squeeked.

Sissel could barely hear her, but he understood her loud and clear: Twilight was getting off-topic again. _“Well until then, they’re not here,”_ he pointed out. _“And without them, I’m more or less stuck in Twilight Sparkle’s saddlebags here when it comes from getting from place to place.”_

“That _is_ rather inconvenient…” Twilight’s mind refocused. “If we could move independently, we’d be able to multitask on this case, which with time being of essence would be invaluable.”

“Hey, uh…” Fluttershy mumbled.

“Did you say something, Fluttershy?” Twilight asked.

“I think I… have an idea…”

_“An idea? For what?”_ Sissel wondered.

“For moving around…”

“You mean instead of a telephone?” Twilight’s head tilted slightly.

The pegasus nodded. “Wait here, I’ll be right back…”

She trotted back across the bridge to her house and entered. A minute later, she emerged carrying something clenched in her teeth, something Sissel vaguely recognized the shape of.

“Is that a plush toy?” Twilight asked.

When she arrived next to the unicorn, Fluttershy placed down the plush pony, now revealed to be of a unicorn stallion made of orange knitted yarn for the main body with a somewhat pointy blonde mane and sunglasses, so it was lying on its stomach. “It’s an old toy of mine I kept in the chest at the foot of my bed. Mr. Sissel possessed it while he was saving me.”

“I don’t see how a plushie can-” Twilight started, but then it dawned on her. “Wait… Are you saying that… you want Sissel to try _manipulating_ the plush into walking…?”

“He’s looking for his body, right…? This was the first thing I could think of… I mean, I know it’s not the same, but… Ohh, maybe this was a bad idea…”

“Wait,” Twilight instructed her before looking to her saddlebags. “Sissel, _do_ you think you can make this toy move?”

_Could I? Could I really use a pony plush as a substitute for my own body, at least until I found it? Were my powers of the dead strong enough for that?_

_I thought back to Yomiel. He had had his ghost tricks for ten years when I first remember meeting him after my death. His entire ability set was based around possession and manipulation, including the ability to do so to living creatures, but could it also had been age? His powers changed and grew stronger over time, allowing him to possess bigger objects and eventually people. He even made connecting jumps between cores I couldn’t even dream of making back then, and that entire substitute body made out of separate scrap parts was incredible._

_I had taken the Temsik fragment for Yomiel. I had been a ghost longer than he had ever been; ten years and counting. And lately I’ve found I’d been able to reach my paw out further than I was able to on that night._

_Had I gotten stronger too?_

_“…One way to find out,”_ Sissel answered.

The plush did have a core, and he did indeed recognize it as the one he possessed in the past. A quick trip back and forth from the Ghost World was all that was needed to cling to the toy.

_“All right, Sissel. Focus. It’s not your body, but it’s got four legs. You’re good with four legs. You’ve been on four legs for your entire life. And death. Except the time I thought I was human. You just have to move them the same way. One with the plush… One with the plush… Ye gods, I hope this works…”_

It would be half a minute before the pony’s right forehoof twitched. Slowly, the legs moved, getting themselves into position before pushing the body back up. Slowly the head raised itself and looked up though the miniature sunglasses it was wearing.

“I… I can’t believe it…!” Twilight sputtered. “It worked!”

_To begin with, I was in a town of talking pastel-colored ponies where a library was based in a tree and all the wild animals were treated like pets, and the ponies are all trying to kill each other with exploding crystals._

_And now I’d taken on a substitute body in the form of an orange pony plush toy with an appearance that seems almost a little too familiar to be coincidence._

_I swear, even if I continue on for a thousand years, this will be the weirdest night I will ever know._

Sissel spent several moments examining and testing out his new plush body. Standing up was one of the hardest parts, since he had to provide the plush’s structure himself; he found it easiest to sort of spread himself among all the fluff and cotton that acted as stuffing. This wasn’t completely new to him, as this was the method by which he manipulated his body when he had it; _It seems my powers have indeed changed._ Next was walking; he knew how to do that, but starting out he had to go slowly as he got a feel for balance and the weight of each limb. He tripped a few times, but Fluttershy was quick to help him back up.

“I have an idea,” Twilight suggested. “You can practice walking on the way back to Ponyville.”

_“Smart,”_ Sissel replied. _“Let’s get going. The night is still young.”_

With that, the three of them set off back for town. It wasn’t too far along that Sissel got the hang of his new temporary body and was soon keeping a good walking pace with the others. He wasn’t as fast as he was as a cat, but he could keep up with their usual walking speed.

_“So, where to next?”_ he asked.

“Carousel Boutique’s closest to here, so we’ll check in on Rarity first,” Twilight answered.

“What do we do when we get there…?” Fluttershy added.

“…Well, warn her at the very least,” Twilight replied after thinking it over a moment. “Maybe see if we can get her to help round up the others. We’re all in danger tonight, so we have to cover each other.”

“She told me that she got a large order for somepony important when we were at the spa yesterday,” Fluttershy commented. “I think she’s still working on it, and… well, I don’t mean to gossip, but you know how set on a job Rarity can be…”

“We’ll just have to see what happens when we get there,” Twilight responded.

“ _And hope for once the first time I see a pony in this place,_ ” Sissel added, “ _she **isn’t** dead._ ”

* * *

**[9:07 PM]**

_The walk back to Ponyville was uneventful. Fluttershy and Twilight Sparkle continued their small talk, but my thoughts were occupied with other questions. Like, how long would it take to check on all four of the remaining ponies?_

_Hopefully not too long. I didn’t have to worry about my body rotting at least, thanks to the Temsik fragment, but if I didn’t find it… I don’t know what I’d do. I know Kamila will be wondering why their kitten hasn’t come home. I haven’t seen her cry – at least not in this life – and I wasn’t about to start now._

_This is going to gnaw at me all night…_

_Before long, we were back in Ponyville. Carousel Boutique was only a few steps away._

The building was just as round as the last time Sissel saw it, with walls the blue of a noon sky and giant windows even larger than the purple front door, which had a “Closed” sign hanging from it. It was also quite tall, reaching up into a large spire, with a second floor with a pair of pony-shaped iron statues decorating it. Kamila had once taken him to a park with a carousel, and indeed the design of the building seemed very much inspired by the ride.

“The first floor lights are on,” Twilight noted. “Rarity must be working on that big order.”

Sissel trotted up to beside the door and laid his plush form down. Like with the other two’s homes, this one also had a core in the doorknob. “ _Hope you don’t mind if I check this place out on my own while you’re talking,_ ” he told Twilight. “ _I’ll just leave the plush here for now._ ”

“OK,” Twilight replied, levitating her saddlebags to lay beside the plush. “And hopefully this’ll deter any late-night miscreants.”

“I’m sure nopony in Ponyville is mean enough to steal from a princess,” Fluttershy commented.

“I know that,” the other pony answered. “I just hope empty saddlebags and a plush toy aren’t worth stealing to the ponies trying to kill us.”

As Twilight knocked her hoof on the door, Sissel clung to the doorknob and examined the inside of the boutique. His first impression was pink. A lot of pink. Well, maybe a little too purple for straight pink, but pink was pink as far as he was concerned. The main room was rather oval in general shape, though the exact shape was different thanks to a wall on the left that seemed to curve inwards. This back wall was divided into two sections by sets of purple curtains, one containing a rack of elaborate pony-fitted dresses, the other a sequence of stations with a mirror and tub each. Past that was a stairway leading upwards, a brown “Employees Only” door, a pink Western-like pair of double doors leading into an enclosure of purple curtains ( _Probably some sort of changing room._ ), and a stage-like area surrounded by three mirrors hung from a chandelier-like device hanging from the ceiling. _Or maybe carousel-like_ , he reflected. One of the chandelier bars had a small length of black fabric of some sort hanging from it. A large shelf filled with books and what looked like craft supplies stood in the back, tucked into the corner where customers weren’t likely to see it.

His second impression came from the pony mannequins standing in the room. There were four of them, all of which were adorned in black robes. Most of them had gold trimming and strange runes embroidered into them, while one other had only the trimming. They surrounded a worktable in the center of the room, covered with papers and craft supplies, mainly balls of thread and copious amounts of black fabric. Near the door was a medium-sized basket filled with a large amount of even more fabric, sitting on a low-lying gurney.

In the middle of the room, next to the half-finished mannequin with just trimming on its robe, stood a very beautiful white unicorn with a lightly curled royal purple mane and bright blue eyes; balanced on her snout were a pair of large red glasses. She carried an air of gracefulness about her, like she made an effort to not look anything less than her best at any time on the offchance someone was watching.

_She’s also not dead. I’d call that a plus._

At the sound of Twilight’s knock, her attention was turned from the mannequin she was tending to the door. “Sorry, we’re closed for the day,” she called, her voice’s beauty easily being a perfect match for her appearance. “Come back tomorrow.”

Twilight let loose a breath she had been holding at the sound of the unicorn before replying. “Rarity, it’s me, Twilight. I’ve got Fluttershy with me too. Can you please let us in? It’s really important.”

“Twilight? Fluttershy?” Rarity reacted with surprise. “Well this is certainly an odd hour for you to be calling.” Her horn lit up, this one a bright blue, and the latch on the door slid open and the doorknob turned. The door then swung open to admit passage to the two ponies; Sissel took this chance to hop over to the nearby fabric basket. “I hope you forgive me for not giving the proper formalities, Princess,” she continued. “I’m afraid I’m quite busy.”

“Rarity, it’s OK,” Twilight replied as she entered, making sure the door was firmly shut behind them once everyone was inside. “Like I told you and the others a thousand times, I don’t want my friends treating me any different just because I’m a princess now.”

“Umm… aren’t you normally open until 10…?” Fluttershy asked, then quickly added, “That is, if you don’t mind me asking.”

“Not at all, dear,” the unicorn replied. As she spoke, her attention seemed mostly focused on “Normally I do stay open until 10 p.m., but this is a special case.”

“Special case?” Twilight inquired. “You mean your big order? Fluttershy mentioned it to me earlier.”

“Precisely,” Rarity replied. “And tonight is that holiest of all nights – my deadline. I have to make sure every single one of these outfits are perfect by midnight tonight.”

“By midnight?” Twilight asked. “Why specifically midnight?”

“The client was very clear on the matter,” Rarity replied. “Their agent said he was going to be here by midnight tonight, and I was to have everything ready by then. So I closed early to give myself enough time.”

“Don’t you usually do your work upstairs?” Twilight questioned, looking over the strange garment on the closest mannequin.

“Normally, yes,” Rarity replied as she telekinetically pulled the gurney bearing the basket Sissel was occupying near the door right next to her. “However, I had so many robes made upstairs it was getting too crowded, so I had to move operations down here.” Then she said, “Oh dear, this one’s getting too full.”

And to Sissel’s surprise, she levitated the basket off the gurney and across the room, where she grabbed a second emptier basket off a shelf and pulled it over, placing the first one, with the ghost in it, where the second originally stood. Afterwards, the new basket was place where the old one once stood.

_Uh oh… I don’t see a path back to the front door from here._

_“Sissel,”_ Fluttershy thought at him. _“Do you need my help?”_

_“No, I’ll be fine,”_ he replied. _“I’ll find my own way back. Don’t worry.”_

He took a moment to look over the shelf’s contents in better detail. From the perspective of someone looking at it, the basket was in the top right. The books and fabrics here couldn’t do anything for him, leaving the only core on the left side one shelf down, in what looked like some sort of large ink bottle. Out of further ideas, he moved into it and waited for the situation to change.

“Rarity, I’ve seen your bedroom before,” Twilight inquired. “It’s not that big, but big enough that _that_ many robes… I’m surprised you even have enough mannequins for them all. Why does your customer need so many of them?”

“I’m a professional, darling,” Rarity replied. “I don’t ask those sort of questions. That’s what the customer wants, that’s what the customer gets. And the customer was quite detailed about what they want. _Very_ much so. Honestly, the inner stitching is the only creative space they’re giving me here, and it’s driving me absolutely bonkers. I mean, _look_ at this!” She telekinetically pulled the mannequin with the finished robe over. “Black with gold trim is fine and dandy when it’s only _one_ outfit, but _two dozen_?! It doesn’t stand out at all! They blend in too well with any environment darker than dim light! And you know what I have to trace the runes out in before I embroider it?! Ink! I’m working with _INK_! Ink on fabric, have they gone mad?! It’s scandalous, is what it is! Whoever came up with this design had no fashion sense at all! If they hadn’t made an offer I couldn’t refuse, I wouldn’t touch this thing with a ten-foot roll!”

“So, um,” Twilight said, trying to overcome the absolute barrage of Rarity’s rant, “their… agent told you how to make each one?”

“Actually, he gave me a diagram,” the seamstress replied. “It’s upstairs right now and rather blocked off by all the robes, but by now it’s been burned into my mind. I could probably make these in my sleep now.” She magically grabbed a small paint brush from the table and dipped it in a small vial, but nothing was on it when she pulled it out. “Oh drats, it’s empty again.” She gripped the larger bottle that Sissel was possessing and pulled it across the room, tilting to pour its contents into the vial.

_Now’s my chance,_ Sissel thought; vial, twine ball on the table, scrap basket then gurney. But something held him back. He was getting curious about upstairs and how many more of these unsettling robes there were. _I’m sure I’ve never seen them before, but they seem… strangely familiar. While I have the chance to get back to the front door now, I’ll be losing a chance to investigate more of the boutique._

Only a single drop came out of the bottle and splashed inside the vial. “Oh double drats. Would you girls please excuse me? I have to get another ink bottle.”

“It’s fine…” Fluttershy whispered.

“We’ll wait here,” Twilight added.

“Thanks!” Rarity replied as she walked away towards the staircase leading up. Sissel, still within the ink bottle, had no choice but to follow her up.

There was a small hallway at the top of the staircase. It contained two doors, one at the end and one on the left, while the right wall had a small window looking out (framed in curtains of that same pink-purple). Rarity opened the right door and entered the room beyond, using her magic to flick on the lights. This room was circular and smaller than the room below, and was clearly her bedroom. The far end of the room had a canopy bed, with the canopy in question being pink-purple ( _She just loves that color, doesn’t she?_ ) and red covers enveloping the mattress. Next to it was a fancy nightstand with a lamp on it and a large dresser. Nearer the door was a large curtained window, currently closed, and a workbench with an array of fabric rolls and a space where a sewing machine would be. The workbench was occupied with several bottles, spools of thread, a spare pincushion with needles, and a few pieces of parchment, some of which had writing.

_So many mannequins…!_ Sissel thought. More than he could count, for sure; one consequence of being a cat is that he didn’t know a lot of numbers. All of them were wearing identical black and gold robes with embroidered runes that itched the back of his head thinking about them.

Rarity placed the ink bottle next to one of the largest ones, that seemed to be filled with a larger amount of ink; likely one of those industrial-sized bottles. Removing the stoppers, he telekinetically lifted the larger bottle and began refilling the smaller one.

“Keep it together, Rarity…” she said to herself as she poured. “This will all be over soon enough...”

_Well, if she’s referring to the robes, they **are** due at midnight,_ Sissel figured. _I need to ride this bottle back down, but before that…_

He took another look around as red filled his vision and Rarity’s pouring halted in mid-air. There were only a few cores among the workbench items; along with the bottles the unicorn was interacting with, there was two of the parchments lying on top of the others and a spool of thread lying on its side. He moved over to it and looked it over; if he set it rolling into motion, it would go off the table and carry him across the room, at least until he hit the base of the mannequin stands. _I wouldn’t be able to get back up here, though, so no thanks. If I ever find myself needing to get across this room, this would probably work._

Next he checked one of the parchments. This one had a drawing of a pony on it dressed in one of the robes in the middle, surrounding by little notes and lines. _This must be the diagram Rarity’s client gave her so she could make the robes. Didn’t she say it was blocked off a minute ago? Maybe she’s forgetting a few details she doesn’t think is important. Like when Detective Jowd occasionally forgets he eats Alma’s last cupcake. And he’s usually much better about remembering stuff…_

Last, the other parchment. Unfortunately, it was entirely writing. Even a couple years of being with Kamina while Jowd was reading her bedtime stories couldn’t teach a cat to read. He could feel it had a little importance, but until he could somehow to get a pony up here to read it out loud, best not to dwell on it.

While his view within the Ghost World was limited to his immediate surroundings for the most part, he was still capable of looking at things he couldn’t reach, such as the mannequins that were closest to the workbench.

_…That’s strange. That mannequin with the incomplete robe downstairs had a core on it, so it stands to reason these mannequins should have cores too. But while I can see their outlines in the Ghost World, I can’t see any cores that I can connect to._

_Could it be that… the robes are **blocking** the cores out…?_

He focused a little closer and felt something he didn’t expect; an invisible force pushing him back. He reached out a paw only for the force to push against it, keeping him away from the robe. The force was also sending a sensation through him that he wasn’t very familiar with, but one that stirred unpleasant memories.

His last second alive.

_Pain._

_Why is Rarity making clothing that can cause me pain…? No wait, I know the answer to that. Her client hired her to make these robes. So the question is, why would this “client” need her to make these? Do they work against **all** powers of the dead, or are they somehow restricted to just me…?_

_There’s many mysteries surrounding Carousel Boutique tonight… Right now, though, I have to focus on getting back to the front door._

Repossessing the ink bottle, Sissel resumed time. Rarity finished her pouring, restoppered the bottles, and started back downstairs. Nothing much had happened in the brief time Rarity was away, though Twilight and Fluttershy were whispering to each other. He tried to listen in, but they stopped as soon as they noticed their friend return.

“Sorry for that,” the seamstress said, uncorking the bottle and refilling the vial. While she did so, Sissel followed his earlier travel plan to move to the gurney closer to the door, but held there. He was so used to keeping his ghostly true nature a secret from everyone – except Missile and Detective Jowd, of course – that he didn’t want to draw Rarity’s undue attention. “With how busy I’ve been, I’ve admittedly gotten a little disorganized.”

“It’s alright, Rarity,” Twilight replied. “Even for someone as skilled as you, it’s still a lot of dresses, er, robes.”

_“Welcome back, Sissel!”_ Fluttershy thought at the ghost.

_“Thanks,”_ he replied, their conversation moving at the speed of thought like most of his conversations did. _“If you don’t mind me asking, what were you and Twilight Sparkle whispering about just now?”_

_“I don’t mind. We were figuring out how to break the news.”_

_“About you two dying and stuff?”_

_“Y-yes. See… w-well, I don’t want to gossip…”_

_“I won’t tell anyone, promise.” Not like I could anyway…_

It was clear Fluttershy was struggling to communicate with the ghost cat without making an especially large amount of movement. _“See, Rarity can get a little… dramatic.”_

_“Dramatic, eh?”_

_“She’s a romantic at heart, and that includes those bit-shelf romance novels I’ve seen at the library. She’s prone to, well… overreacting.”_

_“I see,”_ Sissel summarized. _“Can’t say I’m unfamiliar with that sort of behavior.”_ He chuckled as he recalled a particular lady in purple. _“With the hunters in the night, anything that can draw too much attention is dangerous.”_

_“Also,”_ Fluttershy continued, _“Twilight suggested we not tell her about you, and I agreed.”_

“ _Why?”_

_“She said she wanted to do it all at once if she could, once we’ve gotten everyone together. We don’t have time to explain you and your powers to every single pony one by one.”_

_“Heh. She’s certainly a smart pony.”_

_“One of the smartest of our times, the newspapers said,”_ she smiled.

_“OK, just pretend I’m not here for now,”_ Sissel instructed. _“I’m going to observe for a while, and return to that plush after we’re done here.”_

_“O-Oh. OK.”_

His conversation with Fluttershy finished, Sissel turned his attention to the talk between Twilight and Rarity.

“Yes, well, I’ve dealt with large orders before,” Rarity replied as she got back to work, levitating fabric tools around in a way Sissel couldn’t quite understand. “Not of this grand scale, mind you, but nothing I can’t handle. There’s only three more after this; I might actually have enough time for a short break once this one’s finished. Anyways, enough of my babbling,” she concluded. “If I recall, you came over here because of something important?”

“W-Well, I’m… not sure how to say it…” Fluttershy muttered quietly.

“Rarity, somepony’s trying to kill us,” Twilight blurted out.

“What?!” Rarity exclaimed. In her shock, all the items she was levitating dropped to the floor with a clatter.

_Well, that’s one way of telling someone something,_ Sissel snarked to himself.

“Sorry, too forward,” Twilight apologized. “To sum up, some group of assassins tried to kill me and Fluttershy tonight. We think they’re targeting all six bearers of the Elements of Harmony.”

Rarity hadn’t moved. Her eyes were wide and her jaw had dropped.

“…Um, Rarity?” Fluttershy poked.

_“Good news, just looked,”_ Sissel announced, _“she’s still alive. Do ponies usually lock up like that when they get bad news?”_

Before either of them could answer, Rarity burst into motion, embracing Fluttershy in a giant hug. “Oh thank Celestia you’re both alright!” she cried. “I can’t even imagine how much you’ve both gone through! Never in my wildest dreams…! Or darkest nightmares, for that matter! How did you both escape?!”

Sissel could tell Fluttershy was clearly uncomfortable with how long Rarity was holding on, but she was putting on a brave face for her friend’s sake.

“We don’t have the time to talk about that,” Twilight replied. “We have to get everyone else together so we can figure out what to do about it before one of them actually…” She choked on the word, but Sissel could hear her think, _succeed_. “Anyways, Rarity, we need to get going.”

Silence fell over the shop. Slowly, Rarity let go of Fluttershy and backed away from both of her friends a few steps before turning away.

“Rarity, didn’t you hear me?” Twilight pressed. “I said-“

“I heard what you said, Twilight.” Her voice had switched tones so fast, Sissel couldn’t tell when it happened. Where before it was panic followed by relief, now it was cold and somewhat distant. “I’m sorry, but I can’t go.”

“What?” Twilight replied in shock.

Rarity’s telekinesis picked the tools and materials off the floor. “This order has to be finished by midnight tonight.”

“Wha…?” The princess stuttered in utter disbelief. “Rarity, our friends could be getting _killed_ right now! There’s no way a _dress order_ is more important than that!”

“…The client made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. That’s all I can say.”

“Rarity-”

“Now,” the unicorn interrupted, “if that’s everything, I’m going to have to ask you both to leave. I have to concentrate.”

Twilight opened her mouth to say something, then just shook her head. “Fine,” she spat. “We have to get going. You know, _friends_ to save. Come on, Fluttershy.”

As Twilight started back towards the front door, Fluttershy stepped a little closer. “Um, Rarity…?”

“Yes, Fluttershy?” Her voice wasn’t as bitter as before, but still had a hint of impatience which was only made more prominent by how she refused to look away from her workbench.

“S-Sorry to interrupt you…” she apologized. “Please promise me you’ll be careful tonight…”

“The boutique is just as locked up for closing as it is any other night. I’ll be fine.”

“T-Thank you…” Head hung a little, the pegasus followed Twilight out.

_I’m not sure what just happened. The tension in the air is thick. But it seems this friend won’t be of much help. At least, not until after midnight. Not that I was looking forward to waiting that long._

_She’s certainly… emotional, but I can’t believe a good friend of Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy would just turn them down so harshly with something so important. I wonder what sort of offer her client gave her that she would place more value over than this…?_

_We’ll just have to come back for her later. Let’s just hope she doesn’t die in the meanwhile._

With Rarity so focused on her work, she didn’t even notice the gurney wheeling its way to beside the front door.

* * *

**[9:32 PM]**

The boutique door locked soundly behind the two ponies. Twilight shook her hanging-low head. “I just don’t get it…” she thought out loud. “I know that she has to think about her business, but to neglect something like your _friends being killed_ …!”

“I don’t understand either…” Fluttershy replied sadly. “B-But she’s made it quite clear what she intends to do…”

_“Hate to talk about something I know nothing about,”_ Sissel added, _“but I don’t think we’re going to get her help before midnight. Whatever her reasons, we’ll just have to come back for her later. Right now, we need to focus on saving the remaining three bearers.”_

Twilight sighed. “You’re right… This isn’t like Rarity, but we’re not going to get the reason for her abnormal behavior now and we can’t waste any more time. Now I’m just worried of what she’ll do if the assassins come after her…”

“She’ll be safe here…” the pegasus tried to console her. “She told me she upgraded all her security after the Diamond Dogs broke in last year… Shatter-proof glass windows, reinforced doors…”

“Right, I remember Pinkie telling me about that,” Twilight recalled. “Those crystal grenades didn’t do a lot of damage to the library, and I don’t think they can use so big explosives like they tried with Fluttershy in Ponyville proper, so they’ll at least have a tough time getting in.”

_“OK, safety of white unicorn seamstress established,”_ Sissel replied impatiently, wanting to keep the investigation going. _“What’s next?”_

“Well…” Twilight stated. “I was really hoping to have Rarity on this, but the best course of action might be to… split up.”

“S-Split up…?!” Fluttershy stuttered. “W-With everything that’s happened…?!”

“I don’t like it either, but if we’re going to get everyone else together the fastest, that’s the best way.”

“O-OK, if you say so…”

“Fluttershy, we’re not too far from the part of the outskirts Rainbow Dash’s house floats over. Knowing her, she’s probably out cold in bed at this hour. I need you to go there and give her the news. Sissel and I will get Pinkie Pie and Applejack. We’ll rendezvous back at the library once we have everyone, then we can discuss what to do next.”

Sissel poked at Twilight’s arm with a plush hoof. _“Question: why am I coming with you? You’re basically leaving Fluttershy alone.”_

“Most of the stuff in Rainbow’s home are Cloudsdale items made out of clouds,” she replied, levitating both of their saddle bags back on. “I have no idea if any of them are going to have cores. You’ll be able to do more down here.”

_“Whatever, just so long as we keep moving.”_

“Get Rainbow Dash, meet at the library…” Fluttershy repeated. “Got it.”

“Good luck, Fluttershy. We’re counting on you.”

Fluttershy nodded, and then started back out of town.

“Sissel, we’re going to have to get around quickly, so I hope you don’t mind if I do this,” said Twilight.

_“Do wh-AAAAH!”_ he screeched as he found himself flying through the air into her saddle bags. _“…Well, I suppose I can live with this.”_

Just then, the sound of a loud scream came from deeper into Ponyville.

_“What was that?”_ Sissel asked.

Twilight’s heart raced. “I hope I’m wrong, but… that sounded like Pinkie Pie!”

_“Oh no, not again…!”_

It took only a moment for Twilight to break into a full gallop, rounding the boutique and darting into the town’s inner streets.

_Already we’re on our way to the next scene. And I’m pretty sure, unlike the one we just left, there’s going to be another death at the end of it._

_I have more questions than ever before. Where is my body? Why are these assassins doing this? Why are they hiding in the forest?_

_And what power could possibly be strong enough to force a pony to turn her back on her best friends…?_


End file.
